


under your feet the dirt turns to gold

by laallomri



Series: season 4 au [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining, Rating for Language, actually someone give all these kiddos a hug, also someone give lance a hug, and he Does Not Know what to do about it, and then he does, ben wyatt voice: keith kogane has never had a romantic emotion in his life, but only with consent ofc stay safe and respectful kids, season 4, she/her pronouns for pidge, which is relatable tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laallomri/pseuds/laallomri
Summary: “I like you,” Lance says in a rush.Keith blinks.“That is—” Lance clears his throat, shifting his weight uncomfortably. His hands are still in his pockets, his shoulders still hunched. “I like you—I like-like you. Like, in a more-than-friends-way like you.”For a long moment Keith can only stare at him, astonishment and disbelief and cautious delight warring for dominance. And then, because he’s an idiot, because he spent a whole goddamn year in a goddamn shack in the middle of the goddamn desert and has no idea how to be a socially competent person, because he’s Keith, he says, “That was a lot of the word ‘like’ in one sentence.”In which Keith has about a dozen chances at happiness, and sabotages (nearly) all of them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me: you cannot get overly invested in this giant magical robot lion cartoon you have too much to do for college and are already into ML and writing fic for that
> 
> dark me: Make A Sideblog And Write Fic
> 
> also: I know Lance has blue eyes or whatever, blah blah canon blah. I am a poc and I am Tired of characters of color almost always having eurocentric features so ya boy has brown eyes in this and everyone can Deal With It
> 
> all right here we go

Keith isn’t really sure when the Lance thing becomes a Lance Thing.  
  
He knows when it became a thing, knows that the root of his offense at Lance forgetting their bonding moment was a little too intense to be solely platonic. Back then it was easy to deal with; back then Lance was still a dumb flirt and Keith was still an impulsive loner and he could look the other boy in the eye every morning and absolutely ignore what he’d been thinking about the night before.  
  
But then Shiro goes missing, and Keith is suddenly in the Black Lion and Lance is in Red and somewhere between the support and the sort-of co-leadership and the fact that Keith trusts Lance with both his life and the knowledge that he was _really_ into High School Musical when he was a kid (“High School Musical is a classic,” Lance had said solemnly, “so there is no need for you to be embarrassed.” A pause. “However, I _am_ going to sing ‘I Don’t Dance’ really loudly every time you enter a room for the next week.”)—somewhere between all of this, the Lance thing becomes a Lance Thing.  
  
Keith does not know how to deal with Things. He vaguely considers talking to Shiro, but Shiro has been acting oddly and Keith doesn’t want to bother him. Instead, he does his best to ignore it. He keeps busy, takes on as many duties as possible when Voltron helps out at a specific planet, uses his free time to go on missions for the Blade of Marmora.  
  
And it’s fine. Sort of. He can mostly look Lance in the eye every morning (and notice, with a strange soft constricting in his chest, that Lance’s eyes are bright and warm and so very brown) and he can mostly continue to half-laugh half-scoff at Lance’s dumb jokes (and realize, with a fond lurch somewhere in his midsection, that Lance hasn’t flirted with anyone for a long while, not even Allura), and he can mostly concentrate on his food goo when Lance is sitting next to him at dinner (and wonder, with electricity shooting through him when their elbows brush together as they eat, why Lance hasn’t shifted away from him to have more space, why his skin looks so pleasingly brown next to his own, why he’s thinking about holding his hand when he’s sitting at a hospital-white table eating pasty space goo).  
  
So it’s fine.

.^.  
  
It’s fine, until it’s not.

.^.  
  
Keith is heading back from a mission to collect intel with Kolivan and a Blade member named Kutub when it happens.  
  
Kolivan and Kutub are talking quietly by the controls. The mission had gone well, almost suspiciously so; they probably could have just waltzed in and taken the intel they needed. Keith is sitting on the floor of the ship with his back to the wall, half thinking about how oddly smooth the mission had been and half wondering if Hunk wouldn’t mind making him some of that spicy food goo when he gets back to the castle ship, when Kolivan says his name.  
  
“Paladin Keith.”  
  
Keith starts and jumps to his feet.  
  
“The Red Paladin is calling,” Kolivan says. He turns on the comm and suddenly Lance’s voice is filling the small space, loud and frantic.  
  
“Keith!” he yells, his face appearing on screen. He’s in his armor, Keith realizes with a panicked jolt, and sitting in the Red Lion, his gaze shifting between the screen and straight ahead of him. In the background they can hear blasts and explosions and Keith’s stomach turns at how many there are. “Keith you need to get over here _now_ , there’s like fifty Galra ships and they have a fucking ion cannon and Hunk already took a pretty bad hit and—shit!”  
  
Something huge and loud and dangerously bright hits the Red Lion; Lance’s swearing melts into Spanish and for several seconds Keith can only watch helplessly as he steers his lion out of the line of fire and returns it in kind. Keith hears another explosion, this one louder than the one that had hit the Red Lion.  
  
(Keith knows this is serious, knows he should focus on getting to the others, but it occurs to him that Lance in battle, intent and excited and ready to kick some Galra butt, is—something to behold.)  
  
“HA!” Lance shouts. “Take that, motherfucker—” He looks at the screen again. “Wait, sorry, Kolivan—”  
  
Keith only barely suppresses his snort.  
  
“Send us your location, Red Paladin,” Kolivan says, ignoring Lance’s apology (though, despite the gravity of the situation, Keith swears he can see the barest flicker of a smile on the man’s face). “We will have Paladin Keith to you as soon as we can.”  
  
“All right, sending it to you now—” Lance pushes a couple buttons then abruptly does a barrel roll in his lion, and even through the screen Keith can see the light of the shot that grazes past him. “NOT THIS TIME, MOTHERFU—” Lance glances at the screen. “Uh. Fudger. Motherfudger.” He coughs. “All right, I should concentrate on this now, see you soon, Keith!”  
  
He cuts the link and the screen vanishes. Kolivan changes their destination and puts them on course to join the others. Keith stares at where Lance’s face was, tries to focus on the moment when Lance returned fire and not the moment when the Red Lion turned eerily silver when it was hit, tries to focus on Lance’s smirk when he dodged the second shot and not the sight of how close that shot had been.  
  
They’ll be fine, he tells himself. He’ll get there in time. They’ll be fine.  
  
In less than five minutes he is in the Black Lion and joining the others, and they are. Not fine.  
  
“We’ve taken out most of the ships,” Pidge tells him as he arrives, “but the ion cannon is still a problem. Though it’s kind of less intense than the others we’ve seen? It’s like a baby ion cannon.”  
  
“Guys, if I take another hit my lion’s gonna quit, baby ion cannon or not,” Hunk says over the comms. “Seriously, he might, like, actually resign as Yellow Lion.”  
  
“Blue took a bad hit too,” Allura adds, “though I think she should be fine so long as the ion cannon doesn’t hit us.”  
  
“We’re not gonna let that happen,” Lance says. “Keith’s back, we’ve got Voltron, everything’s gonna be fine.”  
  
It occurs to Keith that this should probably have come from him and not Lance, but as they’re forming Voltron it occurs to him that Lance has always filled in for him, whether he’s absent or around and incapable of giving the others the support they need. He feels like this is significant, but then Voltron is descending on the battle and Keith’s yelling for Hunk to use his bayard to take out the smaller ships. The ion cannon is whirring but they can’t get anywhere near it before the smaller ships are destroyed but it’s taking too long and Keith’s mind is racing—  
  
“Guys!” he yells. “Lure the ships towards you, when the ion cannon fires we’ll get out of the way at the last second and it’ll destroy the rest of the ships, like we did with the teludav!”  
  
“Is this your signature move now?” Lance asks as they fly up. The ships follow and Voltron maneuvers to get between them and the ion cannon. “Run right up to the edge of death and then sidestep it at the last second?”  
  
“I’m not complaining if it works,” Allura says loyally.  
  
“I mean, I’m not complaining either,” Lance says. “I’m just commenting on Keith’s style.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes. “Focus, Lance.”  
  
“I am focusing! Focusing on your cool dodge-the-ion-cannon-to-make-the-enemy-hit-itself move.”  
  
Cool? Lance thinks what Keith does is cool? Lance thinks _he_ is cool?  
  
“I thought you said that Keith’s flying is cool,” Pidge says, “not this.”  
  
Lance splutters. “Both!” he manages to say. “Shut up, Pidge.”  
  
Pidge cackles.  
  
Lance thinks his flying is cool? And he tells people about it?  
  
“Get ready” is all Keith says. The ion cannon fires; they dodge it at the last second and it blasts the rest of the smaller ships. Keith uses his bayard to form Voltron’s sword, and they attack the ship head on, slicing it in half.  
  
The ship explodes, and then Voltron is floating alone among the stars, surrounded by lingering smoke and destroyed ships.  
  
Keith can hear the smile in Allura’s voice. “We did it!”  
  
“Yeah,” Pidge says, snickering. “Thanks to Keith’s cool move.”  
  
“Yes, Pidge,” says Lance, haughtily defensive. “Thanks to Keith’s _very_ cool move.”  
  
(It’s dumb and probably insincere and just a joke but Keith’s heart flutters anyway.)  
  
“Good job, boy,” Hunk says, presumably to his lion. “You made it. Time for a nice nap in the hangar.”  
  
“Good work, team,” Keith says, though the words sound stiffer coming from him than he thinks they would coming from anyone else. “Let’s head back.”

.^.  
  
Lance is waiting for Keith in the hangar when he comes out of the Black Lion “Hey,” he says when Keith comes up to him. “You okay?”  
  
Keith’s brow crinkles. “Yeah,” he says, bewildered. “Am I not supposed to be?”  
  
“No, just—” Lance rubs the back of his neck. “You were on a mission and then had to run back here right afterward and help us out, so we didn’t have time to check that you were okay.”  
  
The feeling of bewilderment increases. “What?”  
  
“Blade missions are dangerous,” Lance clarifies. “You didn’t get hurt or anything, right?”  
  
Everything clicks into place, and warmth blooms in Keith’s chest when he notices that Lance is still in his armor. He must have come here right away to check on him. “No, I’m fine. It went really smoothly. Suspicious smoothly, actually.”  
  
“Cool,” says Lance, then grins and does finger guns at him. “Like you.”  
  
Keith knows he should ignore it, knows it’s just a continuation of the weird inside joke between him and Pidge, and he fully intends on crossing his arms or rolling his eyes or saying “Whatever you say, Lance.” But there’s a part of him that wants to think that Lance might be serious, that he might actually have told people about him, that this bright, brilliant boy genuinely admires something about him, so he doesn’t cross his arms and roll his eyes and say “whatever you say, Lance.”  
  
“Do you really think I’m cool?” is what he says instead, and the question comes out far more uncertain than Keith would have liked, and his greatest desire now is to run away from Lance and throw himself out of the airlock.  
  
Lance blinks. “Dude. _Dude_. DUDE.”  
  
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Keith says, smirking a little, and the banter makes him feel a little less uncertain, makes him feel like this is normal (because it is, he tells himself firmly, it is totally normal, there is nothing special about this at all).  
  
But then Lance’s hands comes down on Keith’s shoulders, and normal flies out the window.  
  
“What—” he begins, stiffening and struggling to ignore the electric current running through him at the contact, but before he can say anything else Lance is leaning forward, his face dangerously close to Keith’s, and Keith forgets how to talk.  
  
“Dude!” Lance half shouts, shaking Keith a little by the shoulders. “You’ve flown into asteroid fields and black holes! You cut one of Lotor’s generals’ guns in half and did that ambidextrous thing with your bayard when you were fighting the other one! You’ve sidestepped a fucking ion cannon not once but _twice_!”  
  
“I.” Keith swallows. “I guess.”  
  
Lance snorts. “ ‘I guess,’ he says.” He peers intently at Keith. “Keith, buddy, my man, you do cool shit all the time.”  
  
“Oh,” Keith says weakly. He feels a bit faint with Lance still so close to him. He wishes he was wearing his regular clothes instead of his armor so he could feel the warmth of Lance’s hands on his shoulders. “Okay.”  
  
He looks up at Lance and sees that he’s smiling, and it’s friendly and sincere and—fond—and Keith really needs to not be so close to him anymore, needs Lance to let go of him before he does something dumb like tilt his head up and press his lips to that smile.  
  
Though maybe—maybe Lance wouldn’t mind. Maybe he’d cup Keith’s face and kiss him back, would lean his forehead on Keith’s afterward and smile at him and—  
  
Thankfully Pidge bursts into the hangar before Keith can act on any idiotic impulses that might ruin his relationship with his teammate forever.  
  
“Hunk wants to know what you two—” She skids to a halt and eyes them with a frown. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I’m telling Keith about how cool he is,” Lance says easily, without turning to look at her.  
  
“And you’re…” Pidge says slowly. “Hugging him?”  
  
Lance makes an impatient noise and looks over at her. “No, Pidge! This is a reassuring shoulder pat that doubles as a way to shake sense into him re: his coolness, like so.” He pats both Keith’s shoulders at the same time, then grasps them and shakes him back and forth again.  
  
“Hey,” Keith says, frowning. “Stop.”  
  
He doesn’t make any effort to move away, though, and he thinks Pidge notices this, because she’s looking between them with an expression that’s growing more gleeful by the second. He makes a mental reminder to try to dig up some dirt on Pidge to use for blackmail, just in case.  
  
“Got it,” she says. “I think Keith could use a hug, though, don’t you? Gotta see if his hugs are as cool as his flying and his ability to get us away from ion cannons.”  
  
Keith glares at her, but it’s ruined by his gasp when Lance chirps, “Great idea, Pidge!” and winds his arms around Keith’s shoulders.  
  
It’s—awkward. It’s only sort of a hug; Keith’s arms stiffly find Lance’s waist and Lance’s cheek is brushing Keith’s hair and their armor doesn’t really allow them to press together, and Keith has to work very hard to avoid imagining what it would be like to hug Lance for real, to wrap his arms around his thin waist and bury his face in the crook of his neck and melt into him.  
  
“Well?” Pidge prompts after a few seconds of silence. “What’s the verdict?”  
  
Lance pulls away. “Keith’s hugs are not cool.”  
  
It’s a joke, it is one hundred percent a joke, this whole damn conversation is a joke, but Keith’s heart plummets anyway.  
  
“Fuck off,” he says, because he’s a charming, sensitive, socially competent person who doesn’t know how to be anything but irritable. He drops his arms from around Lance’s waist and tries to move away but Lance’s hold on his shoulders tighten.  
  
“No, don’t leave!” He smiles at him again, that same friendly sincere fond smile. “They’re not cool cause they’re _warm_.”  
  
There is a beat of silence. Keith is sure the other two can hear his heart thudding. Pidge groans.  
  
“You’re so cheesy,” she complains. “Hunk wanted to know if you had a preference for the food goo flavor but you don’t deserve the right to pick.” She turns and marches out of the hangar, calling over her shoulder, “I’m gonna tell him to give you the eggplant one.”  
  
Lance sticks out his tongue at her. Keith grins, then Lance turns his head back to look at him and—oh.  
  
_Oh_.  
  
They’re still sort-of hugging. Lance’s arms are still on Keith’s shoulders, heavy and comforting, and they’re close enough that Keith can count Lance’s freckles, close enough that if either of them leaned forward at all they could be kissing, and Lance is still giving him that fond smile and his eyes are soft and dark and—  
  
—and then his smile fades, replaced by something serious and wanting, and the softness in his eyes lingers and he’s staring at Keith’s mouth and for a wild moment Keith’s heart leaps and he forgets how to breathe because he thinks that Lance might—  
  
But then Lance tears his gaze away and clears his throat, lets his hands drop to his sides and takes a step back.  
  
“We should go,” he says. “Pidge really will tell Hunk to give us the eggplant flavored goo.”  
  
Keith just nods, not trusting himself to speak without betraying his disappointment. Lance smiles at him again, more briefly this time, then walks past him and out of the hangar.

.^.  
  
Dinner goes like it always does, with Coran telling authentic, absolutely-not-embellished stories about his youth and Allura rolling her eyes at aforementioned stories and Shiro politely pretending to believe them. Pidge and Lance fight over which movie is better, _Shrek_ or _Die Hard_ (“ _Shrek_ contributed so much to meme culture!” Pidge argues, while Lance lists eighteen reasons why John McClane is the ultimate hero and the man he is going to marry one day). Hunk spares Lance and Keith the eggplant goo in favor of the spicy one (“you usually eat it after a Blade mission, right?” he says as he passes a bowl to Keith, and Keith is so astonished that someone noticed something about him that he stammers heavily over his thanks).  
  
Afterward the paladins disperse; Keith usually would head to the training deck but he’s tired from the mission and the battle and his full stomach is making him sleepy, so he goes to his room to turn in early. He’s finished washing up and has removed his jacket and shoes when there’s a knock at his door.  
  
“Come in,” he calls, crossing his arms instinctively as he turns to face the door. The door whooshes open to let in Lance. “Hi.”  
  
“Hi,” says Lance. His hands are in his pockets and his shoulders hunched like the last time he came to Keith’s room. Keith wonders if Lance would ever come here to talk to him without looking uneasy about something, if there might be a day when he would come here the way he goes to Hunk’s or Pidge’s rooms.  
  
( _not that way_ , whispers a tiny voice in the back of his head. _not just to talk or hang out like he does with them, but to_ —)  
  
( _shut up_ , Keith says to the tiny voice, but it just cackles in a way that sounds like Pidge.)  
  
“I have to tell you something,” Lance says once the door whooshes shut. He’s staring determinedly at his sneakers. “And I need you to not say anything until I’m done, ’cause I’m kind of nervous about telling you.”  
  
Keith uncrosses his arms in an effort to look less like someone Lance would be nervous about talking to. “Okay.”  
  
“Right. So. So—” Lance pauses, takes a deep breath. “So this is actually something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while but I thought it might mess up the team or something so I kept it to myself, but I feel like lately things have been—different—and I talked to Hunk about it and he agreed it might be good to tell you this sooner rather than later, cause of, you know, the whole fighting-an-empire-of-furry-purple-aliens thing and the whole going-on-knife-ninja-missions thing. Also because of what happened earlier.”  
  
“Earlier—?” Keith starts to ask, forgetting that he’s not supposed to speak yet, but Lance barrels onward.  
  
“And it’s possible I’m way off the mark and if I am that’s totally fine but I just really need to tell you cause I don’t want to regret not saying anything if something happens to one of us, though obviously I hope that won’t be the case, whether I tell you this or not, though it’s still a possibility of course that one or all of us could, you know, die, cause we’re fighting a war—”  
  
His words are picking up speed, tumbling over each other on the way out of his mouth, and he’s starting to ramble and Keith really needs him to calm down.  
  
“Lance,” he says, and Lance’s mouth snaps shut. “Just say whatever it is.”  
  
Lance opens and closes his mouth a couple times, then takes another deep breath and finally looks up from his sneakers to meet Keith’s gaze. His eyes are warm and brown and bright and Keith feels a bit dizzy looking into them.  
  
“I like you,” Lance says in a rush.  
  
Keith blinks.  
  
“That is—” Lance clears his throat, shifting his weight uncomfortably. His hands are still in his pockets, his shoulders still hunched. “I like you—I _like_ -like you. Like, in a more-than-friends-way like you.”  
  
For a long moment Keith can only stare at him, astonishment and disbelief and cautious delight warring for dominance. And then, because he’s an idiot, because he spent a whole goddamn year in a goddamn shack in the middle of the goddamn desert and has no idea how to be a socially competent person, because he’s _Keith_ , he says, “That was a lot of the word ‘like’ in one sentence.”  
  
After his confession Lance had gone back to staring at his sneakers, but at this he lifts his head to meet Keith’s gaze again. His ears are turning steadily redder, though Keith can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment or annoyance or indignation or—what.  
  
His shoulders straighten and his face twists and it seems like he might either start yelling or crying and Keith’s internal monologue is a mess of _shit I fucked up_ and _holy hell he likes me_ and _how can you want to kiss someone when their ears are the color of a tomato and they’re probably .2 seconds away from cussing you out_ but somehow he pushes past it and blurts, “No!”  
  
Lance’s face untwists. His ears are still red. “What?”  
  
Keith closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.  
  
“I mean—” He falters, opens his eyes to see Lance staring at him confusedly. “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”  
  
The confusion melts into wariness now. “Oh.”  
  
There is an awkward pause.  
  
“So…” Lance prompts, after a long moment during which Keith is trying desperately to sort through the mess in his brain and resist the urge to run from the room and keep running until he’s launched himself into outer space where social interaction isn’t a requirement and feelings for dumb boys with pretty eyes don’t matter. “What _did_ you mean to say?”  
  
Keith wishes he knew.  
  
“I—” He crosses his arms again. Lance’s eyes follow the movement and Keith can see his face actually fall, see that he’s bracing himself for disappointment, sees that he knows that a cross-armed Keith is not a Keith with something good to say, and Keith wants so badly to dispel that disappointment, to say something that will vanish that hurt look from his bright brown eyes and make him smile that big unrestrained smile that seems more brilliant than any sun or star in the galaxies they’ve visited—  
  
And the half of him that lets him think of Shiro and Hunk as his brothers and of Pidge and Allura as his sisters and of Coran as his weird uncle and of Lance as something is screaming _tell him tell him tell him_ but the other half, the half that remembers a mother who abandoned him and a father who disappeared and a school who kicked him out for caring too much about the only person who cared about him, this half is screaming _don’t risk it stay in the safe zone how the fuck can you be in a relationship when you can barely carry one conversation, when you can barely get through one day without snapping at someone or accidentally offending someone or losing your temper_ —  
  
And he’s still an idiot, still someone who lived for a whole goddamn year in a goddamn shack in the middle of the goddamn desert and has no idea how to be a socially competent person, still _Keith_ , so he says, “I appreciate you telling me.”  
  
There is another pause.  
  
“And that’s—it?” Lance says hesitantly after a second.  
  
( _no no no that’s not it that’s not it at all_ —)  
  
( _don’t risk it stay in the safe zone_ —)  
  
(a whole goddamn year in a goddamn shack in the middle of the goddamn desert—)  
  
“Yeah,” Keith hears himself say. “That’s it.”  
  
Lance deflates.  
  
“Oh,” he says again, and to Keith’s horror he’s blinking rapidly. “Okay. Okay. Um.” His shoulders hunch once more. “I thought—I must have misjudged—” He stops, starts over. “I promise this won’t affect the team or anything. I’ll get over it.”  
  
Keith’s throat feels oddly tight, so he just nods.  
  
“Anyway, I should—” Lance’s voices cracks and he clears his throat, still blinking too much. “I told Hunk I’d help him clean the kitchen so I’ll just. Go do that now.”  
  
He spins around towards the door, then spins back to face Keith.  
  
“You’re not grossed out or anything, right?” he asks. “I’m sorry if I made things weird or made you uncomfortable.”  
  
Keith has never been more uncomfortable in his life, but that’s his own damn fault, so he shakes his head.  
  
“It’s fine,” he manages to say past the weird lump in his throat, even though nothing at all about this is fine. “Don’t worry about it.”  
  
Lance nods, then turns back around and leaves the room. The door whooshes shut behind him. Keith sinks down onto his bed, his head in his hands.  
  
“It’s for the best,” he tells himself, but the cold feeling in his chest says otherwise.

.^.  
  
Breakfast the next morning is awkward, to say the least.  
  
Keith wavers on whether or not to even go; he’s skipped breakfast before and no one will find it strange if he just goes to the kitchen later to get food. He changes his mind about fourteen times before finally telling himself to stop being a coward and go.  
  
He is the last one to enter the dining room. He sees that his usual seat next to Lance is empty and waiting for him, and he knows it’ll be odd if he suddenly switches seats after months of sitting by Lance, and he can feel Lance’s eyes on him, and he knows he must be nervous, embarrassed, watching for any sign that his confession ruined their—their what? their friendship? friend feels like a word both too big and too small for whatever Lance is to him—their whatever-they-have.  
  
Keith knows all this, but it turns out that despite his decision to appear at breakfast he is a coward after all, a coward and a loner and a fucking idiot, so he passes by the empty chair by Lance and sits next to Pidge instead.  
  
(How can he face Zarkon head on by himself, chase Lotor through an explosive planet, try to fill the shoes of someone as capable as Shiro, but he can’t sit next to Lance and look him in the eye? What is the point of bravery if it fails him during something as basic as sitting next to a bright, brilliant boy at breakfast?)  
  
Lance’s face falls. His gaze snaps to his bowl of food goo. Keith’s stomach twists with guilt and he wants to make some kind of excuse for the sudden seat change, something that won’t make it seem like it’s Lance fault (because it’s not, it’s not his fault at all, it’s Keith’s fault for being a coward and a loner and a fucking idiot). But then Shiro is passing him a bowl and asking him if he got any training done the evening before and it doesn’t seem like anyone else has even noticed that Keith is sitting in a different seat, and the feeble, half-formed excuse dies on Keith’s tongue.  
  
Lance stares at his bowl of food goo all through the meal and doesn’t say anything, not even to call bullshit on Coran when he says that the snow on Altea was up of sentient clumps of whipped cream.

.^.  
  
After breakfast, Keith goes to the training deck.  
  
The movement helps. Sort of. He has to start the first few sequences over because Lance’s face is still in his head, still staring despondently down at the bowl of food goo, but eventually he manages to shake himself of the image and focus on defeating each opponent. After the sixth sequence the words _in-a-more-than-friends-way like you_ pops into his head, and he chops off the training bot’s arm; after the tenth sequence _and that’s—it?_ pops into his head, and he slices through the training bot’s knee; after the fifteenth sequence _I’ll get over it_ pops into his head, and he scowls and stabs the training bot in the chest.  
  
He stands still for a minute after the bot falls, his sword hanging limply at his side. In his head Lance is back to flirting with Allura, back to taking more selfies than strictly necessary with an annoyingly attractive alien diplomat, back to winking at the Puigian boy who brings them their drinks during the celebration dinner.  
  
_I’ll get over it._  
  
Keith swallows, then says hoarsely, “Begin training sequence” and defeats the bot in record time.

.^.  
  
At noon Shiro comes to ask if he wants lunch. Keith refuses, claiming that he’s not hungry, and keeps training. He thinks he might skip dinner too, might just stay on the training deck and stab bots until his feelings cease to exist, but his body betrays him; some hours after Shiro came to check on him, Keith’s stomach is protesting loudly and his arms are sore. He presses on anyway, until the training bot almost wins with a laughably simple move.  
  
“End sequence,” Keith says. The bot stiffens, then drops through the panel in the floor. Keith deactivates his bayard and glances at the clock, which Pidge had rigged to show earth hours as well as vargas. It’s just after three o’clock. No one would be in the kitchen if Keith went now.  
  
He goes to his room first to shower, then heads to the thankfully empty kitchen and gets a bowl of plain food goo. He’s just finishing up and putting the bowl in what Hunk says is the Altean equivalent of a dishwasher when Pidge bursts into the kitchen.  
  
“There you are!” she says, running over and tugging at his arm. “Come on!”  
  
Keith frowns. “What?”  
  
“Me and Hunk and Lance want to play the Altean board game Coran gave us,” she explains, still tugging futilely at his arm. He watches her efforts blankly, unsure whether to be confused or amused. “You know, the one that needs at least four players. Come on, we’re all in the lounge.”  
  
_And Lance_. “Uh—” Keith yanks his arm out of her grip and avoids her gaze. “Can’t you just ask someone else to play?”  
  
“Allura’s taking a nap and Coran and Shiro said they’re tired of always losing so they don’t want to play,” Pidge says. She pulls at Keith’s arm again. “Come _on_!”  
  
He hesitates another moment, then makes the mistake of looking down at Pidge. Her hair is ruffled up as if she’d been running around the castle ship trying to find him and her eyes are big and pleading behind her enormous glasses and she’s still trying so hard to physically move him despite her obvious failure to do so and he thinks this might be what it’s like to have an adorably annoying little sister and Keith—  
  
Keith melts.  
  
“Fine,” he says, and is rewarded with a giant smile and a cheer.  
  
He lets Pidge half-drag him to the lounge, where Hunk and Lance have already set up the game on the floor in front of the couch.  
  
“You remember the rules?” Hunk asks.  
  
“Sort of,” Keith says, sitting between him and Pidge. He thinks he can feel Lance’s gaze slide to him for the briefest of seconds, but he resists the desire to check. “You have to go all the way around the board four times and try to knock off everyone else along the way, right?”  
  
Hunk nods. “If you land on a star you have to take one of these cards and do what it says, and if you land on the octagon after rolling a seventeen you can automatically eliminate anyone else.” He looks round at everyone. “Ready?”  
  
Everyone nods. Hunk hands out the player pieces (tiny color-coded animals that look like a hippopotamus with four wings and six eyes) and takes out the dice.  
  
“Then let us begin the quest,” he says, in a deep dramatic voice that has Pidge cackling and Lance snorting and Keith rolling his eyes.  
  
The game passes pleasantly enough. Half an hour later finds Pidge in first place, with Keith not far behind. Lance and Hunk quickly team up to try to take the two of them out together.  
  
“You know this is every man for himself, right?” Keith reminds them. The competitiveness of the game has made it a little easier to interact with Lance, and he finds himself able to look at him as he says it.  
  
“Every _person_ ,” Lance corrects, and Keith winces.  
  
“Right, sorry, Pidge.”  
  
Pidge waves a hand as if to say “no problem” but otherwise keeps her attention focused on the board.  
  
“Alliances are important, Keith,” Lance goes on. “It’s like the mafia. You gotta work with people you might otherwise be enemies with in order to get ahead.”  
  
The corner of Keith’s mouth quirks. “Are you saying this board game is like working with the mob?”  
  
“Yes,” Lance replies, looking dead serious. “It is _exactly_ like working with the mob. There is literally no difference between the two.”  
  
“Really,” says Keith dryly. “I didn’t know the mob made all their decisions by rolling turquoise dice marked with alien squirrels instead of dots.”  
  
“Of course they do,” Lance says with an air of authority. “Didn’t you know that? I thought everyone knew that.”  
  
Keith hides a smile. “Do you have any other mafia knowledge?”  
  
“Plenty,” Lance begins, but Pidge interrupts him.  
  
“Stop flirting, it’s your turn,” she says.  
  
Keith jumps; he feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be. He glances at Lance, whose ears are a familiar red as he rolls the dice.  
  
“Seventeen,” Hunk says, then gasps. “Lance!”  
  
Lance blinks down at the board. He looks up at Keith and smirks.  
  
“You’re dead, Keith,” he says, then moves his blue winged hippo seventeen spaces forward, onto the octagon. He throws out his arms and collapses back against the couch, his head resting on the cushion so he can look straight up at the ceiling and shout, “ELIMINATIONNNNNNNNN!”  
  
“Why _me_?” Keith protests, as Hunk removes the red winged hippo from the board with an apologetic smile. “Pidge is in first place!”  
  
Pidge swats at his arm. “Stop sabotaging me!” She picks up the dice and rolls. “Boo, just a four.”  
  
Lance sits up. “Don’t take it personally, Keith,” he says. “This is just how the mafia is. No mercy.”  
  
“The mafia would take out the person in first place,” Keith points out.  
  
“You didn’t even know that the mafia makes decisions with turquoise, alien-squirrel-patterned dice! How do _you_ know who they would take out first?”  
  
He’s ridiculous, and a ridiculous Lance is a Lance worth rolling his eyes at, but Keith finds himself grinning instead. Lance grins back, and his ears are still a little red and his hair is sticking up in the back from where he’d leaned against the couch cushions and his eyes are shining and—  
  
_I like you_ , his mind whispers out of the blue, but he can’t tell if it’s the memory of Lance saying it or his own heart speaking, and that rattles him enough to make him stand.  
  
“I’m gonna go to the training deck,” he says, fighting the urge to clench his fists at his sides.  
  
Pidge and Hunk are still absorbed in the game and barely acknowledge his announcement, but Lance’s grin fades.  
  
“Didn’t you spend all day there? he asks.  
  
“Yes,” Keith says, “but—”  
  
He stops.  
  
“But?” Lance repeats after a few seconds.  
  
“But I—” Keith scrambles for an excuse. “I’ve already lost so there’s no point in staying.”  
  
Pidge and Hunk finally look up too.  
  
“Sure there is,” Pidge says. “Don’t you want to see me win?”  
  
“Rude,” says Lance. “What makes you think you’ll win? Maybe it’ll be me.”  
  
Pidge smirks and adjusts her glasses. “I highly doubt you’ll win. I’ve won every one of the past six games, and Hunk won the four before that.”  
  
“That means nothing!” Lance sputters. “I’m gonna wipe the floor with you.”  
  
Hunk makes a skeptical sound. Lance gasps loudly.  
  
“Et tu, Hunk?” He clutches at his heart. “Betrayed! By my own best buddy!”  
  
Hunk pats his shoulder sympathetically and Lance shrugs off his hand with an exaggerated pout and he’s so dumb and dramatic and Keith likes him _so much_ —  
  
“Maybe I’ll watch some other time,” he says, and without waiting for an answer he turns and strides out of the room.

.^.  
  
Keith skips dinner. Shiro comes to check on him, clearly surprised to find him back on the training deck after spending most of the morning and afternoon there, but Keith tells him he ate a late lunch and will just get food later.  
  
“I’m fine,” he adds, cutting off Shiro’s impending question. “I’m just not hungry yet.”  
  
Shiro gives him a long look, then nods and goes on to the dining room alone. Keith stays on the training deck until past eight, then heads to his room again. He showers a second time, then washes his hair with the weird Altean shampoo Coran gave to them all, the one that looks like bubble wrap when it foams up. Afterward he puts his hair up in a ponytail, heads to the kitchen to get food goo without running into anyone else, and brings the bowl back to eat in his room. Once he’s done he lies down and tries to sleep; surely after all his time on the training deck he’ll fall asleep right away.  
  
He. Does not fall asleep right away.  
  
He tosses and turns, punches his pillow into various shapes, adds and removes blankets, scowls up at the ceiling as if it holds the secret to falling asleep. After an hour of this he realizes that despite completing what felt like eight hundred training sequences he’s still too full of energy, still feels like he needs to run and jump and slice through a training bot’s metal exterior.  
  
He sits up, puts his shoes back on, and goes out of his room. He wanders around the castle ship, taking routes he hasn’t explored before. He discovers three new hallways, a sock that looks like it might belong to Hunk (he pockets it to return to him later), and the space mice snoozing together in a nest they made in a hidden corner. After more than an hour he passes by the door to a room he has only been in once. It’s a plain room, with no furniture or decorations, just a floor covering with the texture of a tablecloth and three windows in place of the walls. He remembers sitting in this room one night many months ago, watching the blackness of space for hours and letting it fill him with an odd sense of peace. He thinks it might help his insomnia to sit there again, so he turns back to the room and opens the door.  
  
And freezes.  
  
Lance is sitting in the center of the room, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms tucked around his legs. At the sound of the door opening he turns his head.  
  
“Hi,” he says after a few seconds, when Keith doesn’t speak.  
  
Keith hovers in the doorway. He should make some kind of excuse and leave, he knows he should, but the starlight dances over Lance’s face and it makes his dark eyes gleam and he’s smiling a little and he doesn’t look displeased at being disturbed, so instead of pretending he has somewhere else he needs to be, Keith says, “Can I sit?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Keith settles down cross-legged next to him. For a minute they are silent, both staring out the window at the stars.  
  
“Could you—” Keith clears his throat. “Could you not sleep?”  
  
“No.” Lance looks over at him, and when he speaks again there’s a curious expression on his face, a strange note in his voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair tied up.”  
  
Keith’s heart thuds; he feels jittery, on edge, though he doesn’t exactly know why. Something about Lance’s face—the way his eyes are all soft—  
  
“I only do it after I wash it,” he says finally.  
  
“So…” Lance raises an eyebrow. “This is the first time you’ve washed your hair since we came up into space?”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, though inwardly he appreciates the way the jibe takes some of the tension out of the air. “You’ve never seen it cause I usually go to bed right afterward.”  
  
Lance makes a disapproving noise. “That’s not good,” he says, with an air of authority. “My abuelita says going to sleep with wet hair gives you a cold.”  
  
Keith gives him a dead stare. “I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never gotten sick from it.”  
  
“It’s only a matter of time,” Lance warns. “My abuelita is always right. One day you’re gonna wake up with years of colds all hitting you at once.”  
  
Usually when Lance mentions his family he looks sad, but right now he’s grinning, as if teasing Keith takes away some of the ache of his homesickness. Keith likes the thought that he can make Lance feel better. He thinks that if teasing him makes Lance feel better, he’d be okay with Lance doing it all the time.  
  
“I look forward to it,” Keith says, with a small smile. “Bring it on, hair cold.”  
  
“I can’t believe you’re challenging a cold,” Lance says, laughing a little.  
  
Keith shrugs. “I like to live dangerously.”  
  
Lance laughs again and Keith likes the sound so much, likes how Lance’s eyes crinkle up at the edges, likes how it makes the big empty room feel warm and bright, likes how his smile makes Keith’s heart feel too big for his chest and shit shit _shit_ Keith can’t think about this right now, he needs a distraction—  
  
“If you’re not afraid of wet-hair-induced colds then why aren’t you in your room right now tempting fate?”  
  
Keith blinks back to reality.  
  
“Uh—I couldn’t sleep. I tried but I was kind of—restless.”  
  
“And you decided the cure for restlessness is to sit still in here instead of walk around or go to the training deck again?”  
  
Keith blinks again, and it occurs to him only now that Lance is sitting here late at night long after everyone has gone to bed and he had closed the door and why would he do that if he didn’t want to be alone and _fuck_ he doesn’t want Keith’s company Keith is bothering him right now why is he such a fucking idiot when it comes to social cues—  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Keith is brought back to the present with a jolt. Lance is giving him an odd look.  
  
“You okay, man?”  
  
“Yeah.” Keith starts to get up. “If you want to be alone I can go, I didn’t mean to intrude—”  
  
“What?” Lance’s expression melts into confusion. “No, man, it’s fine. I like the company.”  
  
Keith hesitates, then settles down again. Somehow he’s closer to Lance now than he was before, so close their shoulders could touch if either of them shifted even the slightest bit.  
  
“When I was little,” Lance begins, without preamble, “I read a book where the main character’s best friend moved to a different country. And the book was set in a time when there weren’t phones or anything so the character was really sad cause he and his friend wouldn’t get to see each other for a really long time. But then his friend told him that if he ever misses her he should just look up at the sky at night, because she’d be seeing the same sky too. The same stars and the same moon.”  
  
He’s quiet for a second. Keith waits.  
  
“People on earth don’t see what we’re seeing,” Lance says, hugging his knees more tightly. “They see something else.”  
  
Keith hears the unspoken in his words, hears the _my family_ in place of _people on earth_. He wishes he were Hunk or Shiro, who are better at comfort and sympathy. He wishes he had the opportunity to do something dumb so Lance could go back to making fun of him instead of looking lost and sad.  
  
“They don’t,” Keith says finally. “But—” He pauses, frowns, tries to think of what Hunk or Shiro might say. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not with you. Just because you’re not in the same galaxy or looking at the same stars doesn’t mean you’re not with them. It’s like—it’s like when we’re all separated from each other, right? If Hunk and Pidge are doing a mission in a different galaxy than where we are it doesn’t mean we’re not still—that they’re not with us—because—” He stops, frustrated; he wants Lance to understand but he doesn’t know how to verbalize it, this feeling that even if all of them were flung to the farthest corners of the universe they would still be together in a sense, that even if they never saw one another again they would still be with one another in their minds and memories and hearts and—  
  
“I know what you mean,” Lance says quietly, and Keith can hear the smile in his voice. He smiles back, relieved that Lance understands without him having to say it, then makes himself turn his head to look out the window again.  
  
There’s another silence, longer than the last. It’s peaceful to sit here, so peaceful Keith can almost forget how uncomfortable he and Lance have been around each other in the past day, so peaceful he can almost forget that this discomfort is his own stupid fault, so peaceful he can almost forget that if he hadn’t been an idiot the night before, if he hadn’t been someone who spent a whole year in a shack in the middle of the desert and lost all social competence, if he hadn’t been Keith, he could have the right to move now so that his shoulder actually touches Lance’s.  
  
He wonders what would happen if he did it anyway, if Lance would move away from him or say something, if leaning on Lance would make Keith brave enough to say _I’m sorry, I was scared, I lied yesterday, I do like you, I like you I like you I like you_ —  
  
“You look nice like that,” Lance says suddenly, breaking Keith’s train of thought. “With your hair tied up. I like it.”  
  
Keith is still staring out of the window but he can feel Lance’s gaze on him, and Lance’s voice is soft and the starry darkness of space out of the windows is frighteningly beautiful and it makes Keith think of the few romantic scenes he’s seen in movies and how they usually happen under the stars and Lance’s shoulder is still almost touching his and his compliment makes Keith feel raw and open and vulnerable and his brain is still chanting _I like you I like you I like you_ and he—  
  
He really needs to get out of here.  
  
He stands.  
  
“I’m gonna go to bed,” he says abruptly. “Good night.”  
  
Lance opens his mouth to say something, but Keith turns and walks out of the room before he can speak. As soon as he’s through the door he breaks into a run, and doesn’t stop running until he’s back in his room.

.^.  
  
The next morning Keith is heading out of the dining room after breakfast (he sat by Pidge again, guilt and misery churning in his gut as he took the seat and saw that Lance’s expression was not crestfallen, but resigned, as if he had expected nothing else) when he is cornered by Lance.  
  
“Hey,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck and blocking Keith’s path down the hall to the training deck. “Um—I want to apologize for last night.”  
  
Keith blinks. “What?”  
  
“I think I made you uncomfortable,” Lance goes on, not quite meeting his gaze, “with the compliment. And—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Keith interrupts.  
  
Lance shakes his head. “Nah, man, you looked really weirded out by it—”  
  
“I wasn’t,” Keith says, too quickly. “It’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it.” He moves forward, trying to edge his way around Lance. “I gotta go train.”  
  
“Right,” says Lance, stepping to the side, and Keith all but runs down the hallway away from him.

.^.  
  
Keith makes sure to avoid being alone with Lance after that. He goes into the dining room last at meals and leaves first, he spends most of his time on the training deck, he only goes into the lounge if he knows one of the others will be there too. He doesn’t make any more midnight excursions throughout the castle ship, no matter how restless he gets.  
  
At first Lance seems confused and hurt by Keith’s behavior, but eventually he is as resigned to this as he is to Keith’s new seat at the dining table. After a few days he doesn’t look surprised at all whenever Keith enters a room only to spin around and exit the moment he realizes it’s just Lance there, or whenever Keith immediately offers to pair with Hunk or Pidge or Allura when they go on missions to help transport supplies so that he can avoid going with Lance.  
  
So it’s fine.

.^.  
  
It’s fine, until it’s not.

.^.  
  
The next time Keith is on a mission with the Blade and Voltron needs him, he isn’t able to get back in time. The Black Lion chooses Shiro once again, and Keith is happy that Shiro has found his place among them once more, and he is relieved that he doesn’t have to pretend to be a leader, and he smiles when the other paladins ( _his family_ , his mind whispers, and his heart constricts) all pile around him in a group hug, and he wants to join the Blade permanently, he really does, he needs to feel useful and he can’t be useful when there is no lion for him to pilot, and leaving doesn’t mean he won’t see the paladins ever again, doesn’t mean he can’t call them, doesn’t mean they won’t still care about him or he won’t still care about them. He knows this, knows it is for the best, knows he should feel content, but when he leaves he just feels heavy.

.^.

The heaviness does not go away. It gets worse, worse and worse and worse.  
  
It grows when he goes his first day at the Blade without speaking to a single person (since when did silence bother him? He lived for a whole year in a shack in the middle of the desert, silence and solitude should be nothing new to him).  
  
It grows when he has to leave another Blade member behind (he didn’t even know his name, never got it before he—left—and he remembers how adamant Lance was that the team stay together when chasing Lotor on Thayserix, that no one be left behind, remembers that he knows every paladin’s favorite type of cereal even though they haven’t even seen cereal in months, but somehow he doesn’t know half the Blade’s names).  
  
It grows when he hears Kolivan mention a broken data chip and the words _Pidge can fix that_ are halfway out of his mouth before he remembers Pidge is not here (he has always tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, always taken care of himself, and he still remembers his surprise when Pidge fixed a glitch on his tablet without him having to ask; he had walked into his room, resigned to an hour of fiddling with the broken tablet after a long day on the training deck, and had found it on the table repaired and ready to use).  
  
He brings his tablet with him, and Pidge had programmed it so he can call them whenever he wants without Kolivan knowing. In the beginning it feels strangely embarrassing to contact the others, so he calls Pidge first under the pretext of wanting to tell her about Kolivan’s disastrous attempts with the broken data chip. She tells him that she will leave soon to find Matt, and he wishes her luck, and she tells him to call her again the same time next week.  
  
(“Unless I find Matt, in which case you will get a lengthy message from me with just screaming in it,” she says.  
  
“I look forward to it,” Keith replies, smiling. The muscles in his cheek ache; he doesn’t know if it’s possible to forget how to smile in only a few days, but it feels like he has. “I hope you find him.”)  
  
Keith calls Hunk a couple days after talking to Pidge, and his excuse for contacting him is that he wants to tell him that the food at the Blade is less than ideal (“like fucking dog shit” are his exact words, to which Hunk replies, looking horrified, “how do you know what that tastes like?”). Hunk launches into an explanation about how flavoring food goo works, then tells him about the Great Flauto Bean Experiment. That turns into a detailed account of their latest mission (transporting supplies for refugees coming to Olkarion), and then he asks how Keith is doing, and Keith finds himself telling him about having to leave behind the Blade member whose name he didn’t know.  
  
(“I dunno,” he says, fiddling with his sleeve and avoiding Hunk’s kind eyes. “I know I had no choice so I don’t get why I feel so weird about it. He told me to leave.”  
  
“Just cause you joined the Blade and believe the whole ‘mission over the individual’ thing doesn’t mean it’s easy for you to follow through,” Hunk says, shifting in his seat. He’s in the lounge, sitting cross-legged on the couch, and Keith can imagine the way Allura will wrinkle her nose at Hunk’s socks being on the cushions and the way Coran will say “oh, let him sit, ’Lura, kids will be kids!” and god he misses them all so much it hurts. “It’s okay to feel weird. I feel weird all the time. Though right now that might be because of what Coran gave us for lunch.”  
  
Keith huffs a laugh at that, and then Hunk has to go help Pidge with something too techy for Keith to understand, but before he goes he makes Keith promise to call again soon.)  
  
It takes him a few more days to call Shiro. It feels—odd, talking to him. He seems distracted, his presence not as comforting as it used to be. Shiro updates him on what they’ve been doing, asks after his health, waves over Allura and Coran to say hello as well.  
  
(“We expect Pidge should be back soon,” Shiro says, “though we don’t know if she’ll bring good news or bad.”  
  
“I’m sure it’s good news,” Keith says. Matt’s absence has been hard on Shiro too; he still isn’t sure if it had been a good idea to have pushed him out of the way to fight the gladiator.  
  
“We hope so,” Allura says. “We have to go now, but it was nice to talk to you. Stay safe, all right?”  
  
“And call again!” Coran adds. “It hasn’t been moody enough without you around! We need our daily dosage of brooding young man in the castle!”).

.^.  
  
Lance calls him the day after he leaves the castle ship. Keith is about to go to bed when the tablet lights up, _LANCE MCCLAIN_ emblazoned on the screen. He stares at it, wonders if something is wrong, thinks that if there was an emergency he would call Kolivan and not him, then thinks that maybe for some reason he _can’t_ call Kolivan and that’s why he’s calling Keith instead. He hovers by the table, unable to decide (what, he asks himself furiously, even is the point of being impulsive if your impulsive instincts don’t fucking kick in when you need to make a decision like this?) and after a few rings the screen goes dark.  
  
Keith waits, staring at the tablet, but it doesn’t light up again, so it isn’t an emergency. Lance just wanted to talk, and Keith knows he should call him back, either now or tomorrow or soon, but he never does.  
  
Three days later Lance calls again, but Keith is on a mission so he can’t answer. He comes back to his room, sees the missed call, looks into the mirror and sees that he looks like death.  
  
_Lance shouldn’t have to see me like this_ , he decides, and tells himself that it’s a valid point and not just an excuse.

.^.  
  
After the first week Keith figures out a system, the time and day of the earth week that suits each person best. Pidge calls him once she has news of Matt; Keith comes back from a mission, collapses exhaustedly onto his bed, and checks his tablet to find a video message from her. True to her word, it’s just a full ten seconds of her staring into the tablet and screaming, which he is frantically trying to decipher as either good or bad, until finally a vaguely familiar voice off-screen says “Calm _down_ , sis, you’re gonna scare him.”  
  
“I’M EXCITED MATT DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.”  
  
Keith’s exhaustion vanishes; he sits up, a wide grin splitting his face and growing wider by the second. What looks like a bigger version of Pidge appears on screen beside her.  
  
“Hi Keith, this is Matt, I don’t know if you remember me from the Garrison but I’m alive and well and Pidge found me! And she’s a paladin of Voltron! My little sister, a paladin! Isn’t that awesome!”  
  
It sounds like he says something else too but it’s drowned out by Pidge. “LOOK KEITH LOOK I FOUND HIM I FOUND HIM KEITH HE’S OKAY I FOUND HIM—”  
  
Matt wrestles the tablet out of Pidge’s hands; she yells “HEY” and there’s a few seconds where the image is a blur as they fight to hold the device. Matt wins and holds it up to his face again, high enough that Pidge can’t see even though she’s standing right next to him.  
  
“Sorry about that, Keith, we’re obviously both very happy but _somebody_ doesn’t know how to use her inside voice.”  
  
“EXCUSE YOU,” Pidge shouts, jumping up and down to try to see the screen. Keith sees her mane of hair bounce in and out of view and the whole scene is so silly and warm and Pidge is so wildly, exhilaratingly happy and he can’t stop smiling. “I CAME ALL THE WAY UP TO SPACE TO RESCUE YOU AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME. I CAME OUT HERE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME AND I AM HONESTLY FEELING SO ATTACKED RIGHT NOW.”  
  
“I appreciate the old meme usage,” Matt says, looking down at her. “You gotta update me on what memes I missed.”  
  
“GOOD IDEA I’M GONNA GO TEACH MATT ABOUT THE MEMES HE MISSED I’LL TALK TO YOU LATER KEITH I’M SO EXCITED AHHHHHH—”  
  
She screams for another four seconds and Keith can hear a door opening and then—  
  
—and then he hears Lance’s voice off-screen, louder than Pidge’s screaming, “WHAT THE CHEESE ARE YOU YELLING ABOUT PIDGE I THOUGHT SOMEONE WAS DYING—”  
  
“She’s just really excited that I’m back,” Matt says, grinning, and the message ends.  
  
Keith stares at the tablet. His face feels strange; he touches his mouth and realizes he isn’t smiling anymore, even though just seconds ago he felt like he might never stop.  
  
His exhaustion returns to him in full force. He switches off the tablet, sets it on the table, then lies down and spends half the night staring at the ceiling, Lance’s voice still ringing in his ears.

.^.  
  
He never calls Lance. Sometimes he pulls up his comm link, stares at his name, wonders how he would answer, _if_ he would answer, wonders if he’d be happy to hear from him or mad he hadn’t answered his calls. Or if he’d not care at all, if he’d not be excited at all, if Keith has been so distant for so long that Lance doesn’t miss him.  
  
Part of him knows that’s not true, but part of him is still scared, so he just stares at the contact and never presses it.

.^.  
  
Hunk tells him that Lance kind of sort of tried to hit on Matt when he first met him.  
  
“What?” Keith says too harshly, his stomach dropping, and he can’t help how startled and worried the word comes out and he wishes Hunk would stop looking at him with his kind eyes that seem to know too much.  
  
“Yeah,” Hunk says. “It was kind of embarrassing, actually. Like, don’t do it in front of Pidge, you know? But then Matt had a heart attack because of how pretty Allura is and embarrassed himself more than Lance did, and then Lance got all weird about it and embarrassed himself even more than Matt did. I’m gonna like, die of secondhand embarrassment with both of them around.”  
  
“Oh” is all Keith can say. He clears his throat, tries to settle the displeasure roiling in him. “Do they—not get along, then?”  
  
Hunk gives him a look.  
  
“I mean, because—” He’s talking too fast but he can’t make himself slow down. “Pidge obviously would want them to get along and if they don’t it would be,” good, his mind whispers, but he valiantly ignores it and says, “bad.”  
  
Hunk keeps looking at him. Keith shifts uncomfortably under his gaze.  
  
“They get along,” Hunk says finally. “Matt’s super proud of Pidge and keeps going on about how awesome all her accomplishments are. Lance can’t stay mad in the face of that.”  
  
“Right,” Keith says, the displeasure in him growing. He does his best to sound relieved instead. “I’m glad they’re friends now.”  
  
“Sure,” Hunk says, then changes the subject to tell him about the new acrobat routine the mice are working on to surprise Allura.

.^.  
  
It’s good, then, that he never answered Lance’s calls. Or maybe this is a result of that. Maybe if he had answered Lance wouldn’t be hitting on other boys and getting jealous over Allura and it wouldn’t matter that he’s in close quarters with a dorky nice boy who everyone loves because he’d be thinking about a quiet angry boy who’s trying his best to not disappoint people.  
  
Keith snorts. Right. Because that’s the kind of friend ( _boyfriend_ , his mind whispers, and dear god will it not _shut up_ with giving him dumb thoughts) that anyone would want. That _Lance_ would want.  
  
He was right not to call Lance, and he is right to continue not calling him. He will continue to go on missions and continue to call everyone else and continue to stare at Lance’s comm link before going to sleep.  
  
So it’s fine.

.^.  
  
It’s fine, until it’s not.

.^.  
  
He calls Pidge a little earlier than normal this Tuesday, because he’s just come back from a three-day mission and even though the mission was successful he’s tired and hungry and his arm hurts enough to bother him but not enough to warrant medication and he wants a distraction before going to get his shitty Marmora dinner.  
  
Pidge takes one look at him, at his messy hair and the dark circles under his eyes and the way he’s holding the tablet gingerly with one arm, and immediately launches into an animated account of the latest paladin shenanigans.  
  
She’s finished the story about Kaltenecker’s milkshakes giving them brain freeze and is telling him about her and Matt and Hunk’s attempts to teach Allura how to dab (“we told her it’s how people on earth say hello,” she says, grinning wickedly), and Keith’s forgotten his tiredness and his hunger and the pain in his arm and he thinks he might cry from laughter (laughter is so rare here, where everything is serious and driven and lightheartedness is a thing to be snatched and not savored) and for the first time in weeks his heart doesn’t feel so heavy, and then—  
  
—and then Lance walks into the room, and Keith hasn’t seen him in ages ( _three weeks five days and four hours_ , whispers a traitorous voice in the back of his mind) and his laughter fades and he isn’t prepared for the way his heart lurches and his breath hitches and he thinks this must be what it is like to find an oasis when you are dying—  
  
“Lance!” Pidge exclaims, scooting over. “Come over and say hi to Keith!”  
  
Lance is frozen between the door and the couch. He’s staring straight at Keith and if Keith tries hard enough he can pretend that he is in the lounge with them and Lance is standing only a few feet away instead of a few galaxies.  
  
“Hey!” Pidge snaps her fingers in front of the screen. Keith jumps, drags his eyes away from Lance to look at her instead. “Are you okay? I thought maybe the screen froze but I realized this is probably more advanced than Skype.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Keith says automatically. “Uh—hi, Lance.”  
  
The sound of his name spurs him into motion; he blinks a few times, as if waking from a dream, then moves slowly towards the couch and sits on the floor beside Pidge. This close Keith can see that Lance’s hair is a little damp, as if he’s just washed it, and Keith had forgotten how long his eyelashes are and how many freckles are spattered across his nose and cheeks and the precise way he slouches when he sits and—  
  
“Is there a reason you’re sitting here and have the computer on the couch?” Lance asks.  
  
The sound shakes Keith out of his reverie. He hurriedly looks at Pidge before Lance can notice him staring.  
  
“Because sitting on the floor is superior to sitting on the couch,” Pidge says to Lance, “and those who think otherwise are weak and natural selection will come for them.”  
  
“Point,” Lance says, “but counterpoint: this floor is not comfortable.”  
  
“Counter-counterpoint,” Pidge says, adjusting her glasses, “sitting on anything not really meant to be sat on is superior to a couch, whether it is comfortable or not. That’s why kitchen counters are god tier seats.”  
  
“Doesn’t Hunk hate when you sit on the kitchen counter?” Keith asks. He knows he does; Hunk complains constantly about Lance and Pidge’s disregard for kitchen etiquette and hygiene, and he spent half of their last call lamenting the fact that Matt is a kitchen counter seat heathen too. But Lance hasn’t responded to his greeting and he won’t look at him despite sitting right in front of the computer and it’s making irritation and longing churn in his gut.  
  
“Yeah,” Pidge says, right as Lance says, “Why are you calling? Is everything okay?”  
  
Pidge looks at Lance in surprise, and guilt joins the knot of emotions in Keith’s stomach. Lance still isn’t looking at him; he’s drawn up a knee and is ostensibly re-tying his shoelace.  
  
“What do you mean?” Pidge asks. “This is when he always calls. Do you not know the schedule?”  
  
Lance can’t pretend to be tying his shoelace anymore. He slants a glance at Keith, so swift Keith thinks he might have imagined it, then looks at Pidge. “What do _you_ mean? We haven’t heard from him since he left.”  
  
“What?” Pidge says, and Keith wishes he could cut this call and hide under his covers for longer than Zarkon’s been emperor. “Obviously the schedule changes if there’s a mission, but Keith calls every Tuesday to talk to me. Thursday is for Hunk and either Saturday or Sunday is for Shiro. Allura and Coran join in on those too, sometimes, which,” She turns to Keith, “is quite frankly terrifying. It’s like talking to your dad, older sister, and uncle at the same time.”  
  
Keith knows he should react here, roll his eyes or huff a laugh or say _Shiro isn’t responsible enough to be a dad, he once wore a shirt that had two-day-old spaghetti sauce stains on it to a job interview_ , but he can’t say anything, can’t do anything, can’t even think anything because Lance is staring at Pidge as if she had just told him that Keith had kicked a puppy.  
  
“I,” he says, and he sounds faint, his voice wavering even in that one syllable, and then he turns to Keith and the devastation on his face is too much too much _too much_ there is no reason he should look this upset that Keith didn’t call him. “I didn’t know you’d been calling everyone back. I thought you were too busy to talk to us.”  
  
Pidge’s head swivels from Keith to Lance and back. Her mouth forms a little ‘o’ and then she fixes Keith with her best glare, the one usually reserved for those who try to talk to her when she’s glasses-deep in programming her latest gadget.  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, and immediately wants to kick himself. “I mean—I have. Been calling everyone.”  
  
_Not everyone_ , the silence whispers. _Almost everyone_.  
  
“Oh” is all Lance says. Abruptly he stands, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I just remembered—” His voice cracks and he takes a breath that sounds more like a strangled gasp. “I told Coran I’d help with maintenance today.” He’s backing away as he speaks. “Bye, Keith, stay safe. See ya later, Pidge.”  
  
He turns and leaves too quickly to hear Pidge’s “yeah, see ya” or Keith’s feeble “bye, Lance.” Keith watches him leave, watches his hunched shoulders and the tense line of his back, and the guilt in his gut rises like bile.  
  
“Ahem.”  
  
He blinks, startled, and shifts his gaze to Pidge. She had ceased glaring when Lance got up in favor of giving him her normal half-fond half-exasperated expression, but now that he’s gone she’s back to glaring at Keith.  
  
“You should talk to him,” she says sternly.  
  
“I will,” Keith promises, but he doesn’t meet her eye when he says it and judging by her frown he knows that she knows that he’s lying.  
  
“I mean it,” she says. “That was a dick move. You really hurt his feelings.”  
  
“I just,” Keith begins, then stops. “I don’t know. There are—complications.”  
  
Pidge rolls her eyes. “Your only ‘complication’”—she does air quotes as she says it, making a face—“is that you’re an idiot. And a dick, as previously implied.”  
  
Keith scowls.  
  
“Seriously,” Pidge says, “you can’t avoid him forever. Or I guess you can, but you shouldn’t. It’s not fair to him. Or to me and Hunk for that matter, cause we have to put up with mopey Lance. And again,” She intensifies her glare, which Keith hadn’t really thought was possible, “you _really_ hurt his feelings. Lance is a good person, he deserves better treatment than this.”  
  
“I’ll talk to him,” Keith insists, and he wants to, he really does, he wants to call Lance every day and listen to his dumb jokes and his embellished stories and look at his pretty eyes and the way his big hands move when he talks and tell him about how shitty the Blade of Marmora’s dinners are and how in a rare moment of levity one of the Blade members juggled three bread-like rolls to make fun of how overcooked they were and—  
  
—and Keith’s been wondering lately if it’s really that bad to risk it, if it’s really worth staying in the safe zone if the safe zone doesn’t have anyone in it with him.  
  
“I’ll call him,” he says again, and the look Pidge gives him is so canny he thinks for a second that he might have said that all out loud.  
  
But he hadn’t, and her glare lessens to normal Pidge levels instead of murderous rage levels. She says, “Okay, you better,” and goes on to tell him about the upgrades she made to the translation software (“so we can teach Allura and Coran about memes!”).

.^.  
  
As soon as Pidge says goodbye Keith wants to call Lance, partly to get it over with and partly to do it before he loses his nerve. He’s halfway to pulling up Lance’s name on the tablet when it occurs to him that if he calls now it might look like a pity call.  
  
He sets the tablet down on the table by the bed and goes out to find a distraction. He’ll wait a few hours, maybe a day, and then call. It’ll look more voluntary that way, and give Keith a chance to figure out what the hell he’s going to say.  
  
He helps sort through some intel from their latest mission, goes to the Blade’s equivalent of a training deck, eats dinner with a few Blade members. Afterward he goes back to his room to shower and sees that there’s four missed calls from Hunk.  
  
Panic fills him—there’s no need to call that many times in a row, not unless something horrible has happened—and he almost drops the tablet in his haste to pull up Hunk’s name. It rings once, twice, then Hunk’s face fills the screen.  
  
“Hi,” says Keith, “is everything okay?” to which Hunk responds by pointing a finger at the screen and shouting, “LISTEN HERE, YOU.”  
  
Keith blinks. “What?”  
  
Hunk’s glare could rival Pidge’s murderous one. “YOU’VE GOT SOME _FUCKING_ NERVE TREATING LANCE LIKE THIS.”  
  
Keith has never been so terrified in his life. He’s pretty sure he’s never heard Hunk swear before; he’d sort of thought that Hunk didn’t even know what swearing was.  
  
“I,” he starts to say, but Hunk cuts him off.  
  
“HE’S SO UPSET HE DIDN’T EVEN COME TALK TO ME,” Hunk goes on, still glaring daggers at Keith. “HE JUST WENT STRAIGHT TO HIS ROOM AND HE’S BEEN THERE FOR HOURS AND HE WON’T ANSWER ANYBODY. PIDGE HAD TO TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED AND—”  
  
“Hunk,” Keith interrupts, rattled by the intensity of his wrath, “Hunk I get that you’re angry but can you maybe not yell—”  
  
“—LANCE ALWAYS COMES TALKS TO ME WHEN HE’S UPSET, _ALWAYS_ , BUT YOU’VE MADE HIM SO SAD HE WON’T EVEN TALK TO HIS BEST BUDDY—”  
  
“Hunk can you please stop yelling and just hear me out—”  
  
“—AND HE’S BEEN REALLY DOWN LATELY AND I CAN TELL HE MISSES YOU AND I CANNOT _BELIEVE_ YOU DIDN’T CALL HIM BACK—”  
  
“HUNK!”  
  
Hunk pauses, though Keith suspects it’s less because of his shout and more because he hasn’t breathed since he started yelling and needs to do so before he passes out.  
  
“Listen,” Keith says. “I’m sorry I didn’t call Lance. I really am.”  
  
Hunk’s glare does not lessen.  
  
“I was just—” He intends to say what he said to Pidge, that it’s complicated, but for some reason his mouth says, “scared.”  
  
The glare grows microscopically smaller. “Scared? Of what?”  
  
“Of it being weird. Because of—” Does Hunk know about Lance’s confession? Or any of what happened after? “Because of some stuff that happened when I was still there.”  
  
There is a short pause.  
  
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” Hunk says finally, and Keith is relieved to hear that he’s at normal Hunk voice levels again. “Lance only told me what he was planning to tell you. He didn’t say much about what happened, but I kind of got the feeling that it didn’t go well.”  
  
Keith shakes his head.  
  
“Hm.” Hunk gives him a long look. Keith resists the urge to squirm. “You know, Lance has been kind of off lately. He didn’t want to join in when we were teaching Allura how to dab. And whenever we have free time he just stays in his room and plays video games instead of hanging out with us or getting to know Matt better.”  
  
“Maybe flying the Red Lion for so long has turned him into me,” Keith says, in a poorly timed attempt at humor.  
  
Hunk’s glare returns, though much less intense than before. “This is not the time for Galra Keith’s jokes,” he says sternly, and Keith ducks his head, abashed. “This is serious. It’s not like Lance to act like this. I thought he might just be extra homesick or something but I think it might be because of this.” The glare vanishes, replaced by the kind eyes Keith is used to. “He really misses you.”  
  
_He really misses you_.  
  
Keith’s heart flutters. He hesitates, then looks at Hunk’s kind eyes that seem to know too much and takes the plunge. “I miss him too.”  
  
“Then _call him_ ,” Hunk says firmly. “And if you don’t, Zarkon is gonna be the least of your worries.”  
  
Keith nods. Hunk gives him one last look, one that is somehow kind and warning and angry and amused all at once, then ends the call. Keith stares at the empty screen for a few seconds, then sinks down onto his bed, still holding the tablet. He sits there for several minutes, nerves jumping.  
  
He should call now. He should. He _should_. He should do it now, get it over with, apologize to Lance and take one step toward making him feel better, toward repairing the rift between them, toward fixing the giant mess he’d made when he’d said _I appreciate you telling me_ instead of _I like you too_.  
  
He should, but—but—  
  
“But nothing,” he says aloud, scowling at himself. “Don’t be a coward.”  
  
Keith pulls up Lance’s contact, takes a deep breath, then presses ‘call.’

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the comments/kudos/etc., they mean a lot to me! also I forgot to mention in the notes for ch.1 but the title is a slightly altered lyric from Shah Ka Rutba, a song in the movie Agneepath
> 
> warning for this part: this does cover what happens at Naxzela so Keith’s self-sacrificial suicidal thinking is mentioned/talked about

It rings. And rings. And rings. And _rings_.  
  
By the sixth ring Keith starts to give up hope that Lance will answer; by the eighth he is one hundred percent certain that he won’t; by the eleventh he’s wondering why the hell it’s still ringing when it should have cut itself off by now; by the thirteenth ring he’s rolling his eyes at himself, because honestly this is pathetic, it’s on the fourteenth ring now and Keith should just hit ‘end call’—  
  
“Hello?”  
  
Lance’s face fills the screen. He’s sitting alone at the dining table, holding the tablet in both hands. A bowl of food goo is on the table beside his elbow.  
  
For an awkward second Keith flounders. He wishes he had thought out what to say before calling.  
  
“Hi,” he says, lamely.  
  
Lance’s brow furrows. “Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Is something wrong?”  
  
“No, no, everything’s fine,” Keith reassures him hastily. “I just wanted to talk.”  
  
Lance still looks confused. “Did you mean to call someone else? Did you press my name by mistake?”  
  
Keith flushes. A voice in his head that sounds like Hunk starts chanting _you’re a jerk you’re a jerk you’re a jerk_. “No. I meant to call you.”  
  
“Oh.” Lance sits back in his chair. “What for?”  
  
“I wanted to talk to you,” Keith says.  
  
“Yeah, right, okay,” Lance says, rolling his eyes. “Was no one else available? Or are you just taking pity on me?” His eyes narrow. “Wait. Is Hunk making you do this?”  
  
Unexpectedly Keith feels a flicker of irritation. He’s trying, and Lance is being so fucking _difficult_ , and—  
  
He takes a deep breath.  
  
“I’m not trying to—to offend you or anything. And no one is making me do anything. I just wanted to talk to you. Specifically you.”  
  
Lance still looks skeptical. “All right, then talk.”  
  
Keith blinks. “What?”  
  
“Say whatever it is you called me to say and then you can go back to pretending I don’t exist and doing knife ninja things that are apparently way more important than Voltron stuff.”  
  
The irritation is back, far more intense this time, tinged with anger. Dimly it occurs to him that he’s been more irritable lately, has always been on the edge of a breakdown since joining the Blade. He knows that this isn’t Lance’s fault, that Lance has the right to be mad, but knowing your irritation is irrational and actually ignoring it are two very different things, so instead of apologizing like he’d intended, Keith says, “What the fuck is your problem?”  
  
“ _My_ problem?” Lance repeats, his voice rising. “ _I’m_ not the one with a problem!”  
  
“Look, if you’re this mad about me not calling, you could have just called me,” Keith grits out.  
  
“I did!” Lance shouts, leaning forward and glaring at the screen. “I called you twice! Which is two more than how many times you called me!”  
  
“I’ve been gone almost a whole _month_ , if you really wanted to talk you could have called more than twice—”  
  
“No one else had to call you first to talk to you!” Lance interrupts. “I asked everyone else and they said you called them first and that if they called you you always picked up or called back and I—” He breaks off abruptly. Keith can tell he’s gripping the tablet too tightly. When he speaks again his voice is much quieter.“I don’t know, I thought you were just busy or didn’t miss us and then I found out about everyone else and I just sort of thought you’d rather talk to them instead of me. Or that you don’t like me. Or something.”  
  
Keith’s irritation vanishes as quickly as it came.  
  
“Lance,” he says, but he doesn’t know what else to say, so Lance keeps talking.  
  
“Which I guess makes sense,” he says, not meeting Keith’s gaze. “I made things weird cause I told you I like-like you and you said you weren’t grossed out by it but you were avoiding me and then you left and I.” He stops, finally looks at Keith again. “I guess I get it but I kind of thought we were at least friends, you know?”  
  
(friend feels like a word both too big and too small for whatever Lance is to him—)  
  
“And we worked pretty well together when you were piloting the Black Lion and we hung out sometimes and—”  
  
“Lance,” Keith says again, and his stomach is twisting nervously but hurt is in Lance’s eyes and in his voice and in the way he’s hunched his shoulders and Keith needs to make that hurt go away. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”  
  
There is a pause. Lance’s shoulders cautiously un-hunch.  
  
“Why didn’t you?” Lance asks tentatively.  
  
“I’m not—you didn’t—” Keith takes a deep breath. “I thought it’d be weird to talk to you.”  
  
“Weird,” Lance echoes.  
  
“Yeah. Because—” Why is this so difficult? “Because it’s harder to talk to you than to everyone else.”  
  
Lance’s face starts to fall.  
  
“No!” Keith says frantically. “No, that’s not—I meant, it’s easier and harder to talk to you.” He pauses. “At the same time.”  
  
“That,” Lance says, “makes no sense.”  
  
“Shut up,” Keith says automatically, then flushes again. “No, sorry—shit.” He swallows. “I’m not good at this sort of thing.”  
  
“I’ve noticed,” Lance says flatly, and this time Keith manages to suppress the urge to tell him to shut up. Instead he takes another deep breath.  
  
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” he says again, more evenly, “and I’m doing it now because I want to make it up to you. But if you don’t want to talk to me then I—I understand.”  
  
Lance doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Keith waits with his heart in his throat, because it hadn’t really occurred to him until just now that Lance might not want to talk to him anymore, and even though he knows he’d deserve it if Lance ignored him he also thinks he might not be able to stand it if he did.  
  
“I do want to talk to you,” Lance says finally.  
  
The relief that washes over Keith is staggering.  
  
“But I’m still.” Lance pauses, looks away for a second, looks back at the screen. “I’m still kinda mad at you. And upset. And annoyed.”  
  
After the brief second where he thought Lance wouldn’t talk to him at all, Keith will take this. “That’s fair.”  
  
There is another pause.  
  
“Do you remember Kaltenecker?” Lance asks suddenly.  
  
Keith blinks at the topic change. “Yeah. The cow you bought.”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Lance emphasizes, wrinkling his nose. “The cow that came free with purchase.”   
  
Keith smiles a little at his correction. “Sure.”  
  
“Hunk used her milk to make us all milkshakes,” Lance goes on, “and it turns out that Allura and Coran—”  
  
“Right, Pidge told me Alteans can’t get brain freeze,” Keith interrupts, before he can stop himself.  
  
Lance gives him a look. He flushes again.  
  
“I figured Pidge told you that story already,” Lance says. “This is a different story.”  
  
A different story. Lance is telling him a story about his day, even though he’s mad and upset and annoyed, even though Keith has been a jerk to him.  
  
Keith thinks he might cry with relief. Instead he just says, “Right.”  
  
“ _Anyway_ ,” Lance continues, “Allura and Coran wanted more milkshakes, so they went and asked Kaltenecker for some.”  
  
Keith isn’t sure he heard correctly.  
  
“They…asked Kaltenecker?” he echoes.  
  
“Yeah. They went to her and complimented the milkshakes and asked if she could give them more.”  
  
Keith snorts.  
  
“Exactly!” Lance lets go of the tablet, props it up on something on the table so he can gesture with his hands as he speaks. The familiar sight of it sends a warm thrill through Keith. “They like, called her ‘sir’ and were super formal about it and everything! And obviously she didn’t respond, cause she’s, you know, a cow, so they came and got me and asked me to help them out.”  
  
“Which you probably didn’t,” Keith guesses.  
  
Lance slants a sly glance at him. “Keith, buddy, my man—”  
  
(how long has he wanted to hear that, how long has he ached to hear those dumb words come out of Lance’s mouth, how long has he replayed in his head the last time Lance said them and wondered if he’d ever hear them again, or if he’d ruined everything—)  
  
“—point of making friends with aliens if you’re not gonna mess with them a little when you teach them about earth stuff?” Lance is saying when Keith tunes back in. “I made them apologize for misgendering her first, and _then_ told them she’s a cow and can’t understand them—”  
  
“Of course you did,” Keith says, sighing.  
  
“—but they just acted like it was a translation issue? Alteans take everything so seriously, man.”  
  
He tells the rest of the story in trademark Lance fashion, with much gesturing and dramatic effect. Keith mostly just listens, smiles and snickers and rolls his eyes whenever required.  
  
“…so I don’t think they’ll be drinking any more milkshakes for a while,” Lance finishes. He drops his hands into his lap, grins directly into the tablet, and Keith’s heart feels about ten sizes too big for his chest. “Hunk will be disappointed to have lost two people to test milkshake flavors on, but I guess this just means I’ll have to valiantly offer my services.”  
  
“Oh no,” Keith says flatly, though he can’t help smiling back. “Having to taste-test Hunk’s food. What a sacrifice.”  
  
“It truly is,” Lance says, with dignity. “But I shall bear the burden as best I can.” He shifts in his chair. “Though I won’t have to do it alone. Pidge and Matt have been taste-testing Hunk’s food too.”  
  
Keith’s smile feels frozen in place.  
  
“How.” He clears his throat. “How is Matt? Do you like him?”  
  
_(Lance kind of sort of tried to hit on Matt when he first met him—)_  
  
_(They get along—)_  
  
_(I’m glad they’re friends now—)_  
  
“Yeah,” says Lance. “He’s pretty cool.”  
  
Keith isn’t prepared at all for the intensity of the jealousy that streaks through him, nor the readiness with which he acknowledge the emotion as such. He tells himself not to be stupid, that Lance can like whoever he wants, whether it be familial or platonic or—or even—romantic—though the thought of Lance liking someone romantically makes Keith want to run really fast, or stab a training bot, or break something—but that’s stupid, it’s _stupid_ , Keith has no right to be this jealous.  
  
“He’s really supportive of Pidge,” Lance goes on, unaware of the internal battle Keith is fighting, “which is nice. Plus we have a similar sense of humor, which means Pidge is in heaven and Allura constantly wants to punch us both in the face.”  
  
_I’ll get over it_ echoes in his mind in Lance’s voice, and Keith kind of wants to punch himself in the face.  
  
Instead he forces his features into a reasonably neutral expression and says, “I’m not surprised. Matt’s sense of humor has always been dumb.”  
  
The corner of Lance’s mouth quirks. “So you remember Matt.”  
  
“Sort of? We had a class together during my first year and sometimes he’d answer the teacher’s questions with really nerdy jokes. And Shiro introduced him to me once he found out they’d be on the Kerberos mission together. I don’t remember exactly what Matt said to me when I met him officially but it was a pretty awful pun.”  
  
The quirk turns strangely self-deprecating. Keith stares at it, confused by Lance’s reaction, alarmed by how the air between them has gone back to being tense and awkward, until he recalls—  
  
“Oh,” he says, heart sinking, then, as his brain starts chanting _you fucked up you fucked up you fucked up_ he says, speaking too fast, “No, that’s not—it’s just—I just remember him because he was gonna be on the same mission as Shiro, not because—I mean, if it weren’t for that I wouldn’t have remembered him at all, probably, cause I don’t really remember anyone from the Garrison—”  
  
“I know,” Lance says dryly, and Keith flushes. “It’s fine, man. I’m not mad about it anymore.” He laughs a little, though it’s devoid of humor. “It’s on brand for you, anyway. Don’t remember me from the Garrison, don’t call me back. I’m used to it by now.”  
  
Keith’s chest aches. “I really am sorry I didn’t call you.”  
  
Lance just shrugs. A few uncomfortable seconds of silence tick by, during which Keith is casting about hurriedly in his mind for something to say, anything, anything to take them back to how easy everything had been when Lance had been telling him about Kaltenecker—  
  
“I should go,” Lance says finally. “It’s getting late. I’m kind of tired.”  
  
“You—y-yeah, okay,” Keith stammers. “I should probably get going too.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Another few seconds of silence, and then:  
  
“You should call again,” Lance says abruptly.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Sometime. Anytime. Whenever you want.”  
  
“Okay,” Keith says again, because he’s apparently forgotten every other word that ever existed.  
  
Lance opens his mouth as if to say something else, then closes it, then says swiftly, “Stay safe, bye,” and ends the call before Keith can respond.  
  
He sits up in bed for a long while afterward, staring at the blank screen and wondering how it’s possible to feel warm and cold at the same time.

.^.  
  
The next night Keith finds himself sitting on his bed and staring at Lance’s contact on his tablet. He wants to call again, but he doesn’t know if that’s too weak of him. Or maybe it’s too strong, says a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Shiro. Is it weak to admit you want to talk to someone, that you miss them? If it’s weak then why is it so hard to do?   
  
Calling would be strong. _Not_ calling would be weak.  
  
Keith scowls.  
  
“I’m not weak,” he says out loud, and hits ‘call.’  
  
This time he doesn’t have to wait as long; after six rings Lance’s face fills the screen. He’s wearing his pajamas and sitting at his desk in his room, the tablet presumably propped up on the wall. He’s staring at Keith incredulously, as if seeing something that makes absolutely no sense.  
  
That. Does not bode well.  
  
“Uh.” Keith shoves down his incipient panic. “Hi?”  
  
“…Hi,” says Lance. He sits back in his chair, brow furrowed. “Are you okay? Did you mean to call someone else?”  
  
“I’m okay,” Keith says, “and no, I didn’t mean to call someone else.”  
  
An odd expression passes over Lance’s face.  
  
“You’re calling me again,” he says, disbelieving. “Me. Just to talk to me.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Keith, then, doubt twisting in his gut, “Should I not? I thought it’d be okay, you said I could anytime, but if you’re busy or something I can—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Lance interrupts. “I just. I didn’t think you’d actually call again.”  
  
There is a short silence. Keith wishes the Shiro voice would come back and tell him how to respond, but right now his brain is too busy using the Hunk voice to chant you’re a jerk to allow for anything else, so he says, “Uh…what did you do today?”  
  
Lance looks confused. “What did I do?”  
  
“Yeah. Did you move supplies, or transport refugees, or do diplomacy stuff with Allura, or…?”  
  
“Oh. Well, we’re going to help out and do a show on a planet called Vanxern day after tomorrow, but until then we’re just in the castle ship. Pidge and Hunk and Matt have been refining her Galra ship-finding program, and Shiro and Allura have been going over the plan for tomorrow. And Coran keeps telling us about the last time he went to Vanxern and got chased by a fog-breathing, polka-dotted alien anteater.”  
  
Keith frowns; something rather important had been left out of this recitation. “What about you?”  
  
Lance’s shoulders hunch. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I asked what you did today, not everyone else.”  
  
“Oh,” Lance says again, and his shoulders hunch even more. “Um. Nothing, really.”  
  
“Nothing?”  
  
“I mean, nothing important,” Lance clarifies.   
  
“I don’t care if it’s important,” Keith says. “I just want to know what you did.”  
  
Lance looks increasingly uncomfortable. “Okay, well, after lunch Hunk wanted to try making ice cream so I milked Kaltenecker, and then he and Matt and Pidge wanted a break from programming so we played Killbot Phantasm I. And then I went and talked to Red for a bit, and then the space mice wanted to show me their new routine to entertain Allura so I watched it and gave them tips. Or at least, I tried. I don’t know if they understood me.” He avoids Keith’s gaze. “Kind of a useless day.”  
  
Keith frowns. “It’s not useless,” he says. “All of that was important.”  
  
Lance scoffs. “Sure. Mice acrobatics are definitely as important as creating a program to find Galra ships.”  
  
“It’s not a competition,” Keith points out. “Everything has value. Allura is under a lot of stress and the mice always cheer her up, so you’re helping keep her calm and happy. Same goes for the other stuff; you’re making sure everyone takes breaks and does whatever helps them de-stress.”  
  
He’s a little surprised at his ability to say all of this. He suspects it might be because the Hunk-voice in his brain has stopped chanting _you’re a jerk_ and has started actually being helpful.  
  
Lance’s shoulders un-hunch. “Thanks,” he says quietly. “That helps.”  
  
“No problem,” Keith replies. “How is Red, by the way?”  
  
“He’s doing good,” Lance says. “I told him you didn’t call me until yesterday and he said that you’re dumb.”  
  
“Hey!” Keith protests, but then he sees Lance’s grin. “Oh.”  
  
“For real, he said hello and he wanted to know if you get to fly any ships for the Blade that move as fast as he does.”  
  
“I don’t think they make ships that move that fast,” Keith says.  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I told him. I kind of figured our lions are one of a kind.” Lance makes a face. “Or—five of a kind? Something like that.” He crosses his arms on the table. “So what did you do today?”  
  
“Looked over some intel from our last mission,” Keith says. “Trained for a bit. Went over our plan for a big mission next month.”  
  
“No video games or mice acrobatics?” Lance asks, a bit wryly.  
  
“No,” says Keith, then, firmly, “though those are just as important.”  
  
“Sure,” Lance says, then: “I see you also washed your hair today. It’s tied up.”  
  
Keith remembers the last time Lance saw him with his hair tied up, and for a dizzying moment he is back in that room, looking out at the starry vastness of space, and Lance’s shoulder is almost touching his and his voice is soft as he says _you look nice like that, with your hair tied up, I like it_ —  
  
“Keith? Are you okay?”  
  
Keith blinks. Lance’s expression is unchanged, his voice the same as always. Keith can’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed that he doesn’t seem be affected by this topic the way he had been the last time they discussed it.   
  
He clears his throat. “Uh—I’m fine. And yeah, I did wash my hair today.”  
  
Lance looks vaguely disapproving. “Right before bed, too. You’re tempting a hair cold.”  
  
Keith’s heart thuds. Is he supposed to pretend they haven’t had this conversation before? Should he ignore it? Should he reference the last time they talked about this? Or—  
  
“So,” Lance goes on, “does your room at the Blade of Marmora come with mini complimentary shampoo bottles?”   
  
“What?”  
  
“You know, like in a hotel. Do you get tiny soaps and lotions and stuff?”  
  
Keith squints at him. He can sort of see the corner of Lance’s mouth curving, as if he’s trying not to laugh. The sight of it makes him want to smile, but he bites his lip to suppress it.  
  
“Do you think the Blade’s headquarters is a Days Inn?” he asks finally, as flatly as he can.  
  
“I was thinking more like the Four Seasons,” Lance says. “It’s a ten-thousand-year-old organization, their amenities game should be on Four Seasons levels, not Days Inn levels.” He lifts an arm to rest his cheek on his fist. “I’m imagining purple travel-sized bottles with a picture of a tiny knife on the front. Is that right?”  
  
“Close,” Keith says. “The picture is actually of Kolivan.”  
  
The corner of Lance’s mouth curves a little more. “Ah, I should have guessed,” he says wisely, nodding. “Is he doing the Pantene commercial hair flip? You know—” He tosses his head dramatically. “Release your inhibitions, feel the rain on your skin?”  
  
Lance half sings the lyrics, and the urge to smile is overwhelming, but Lance hasn’t cracked yet so Keith doesn’t want to either. He bites his lip again and says, still deadpan, “Absolutely.”  
  
“Are there a variety of scents? Do they have weird names like men’s hygiene products on earth do? Like—” Lance lowers his voice comically deep. “Blade Blast! Marmorite Arctic Punch! Dandruff-free Or Death!”  
  
“Dandruff-free or—” Keith can’t help it anymore. He breaks off with a laugh. “Dandruff—Lance, what the _fuck_ —”  
  
Lance shrugs. He’s smiling for real now, big and bright, his eyes sparkling. “It sounds like something that would exist! Remember Vrepit Sal at the space mall? If that exists then there is definitely a Blade of Marmora shampoo called Dandruff-free Or Death.”  
  
“It’s probably—” Keith begins, but he’s interrupted by a loud knock at his door. He looks over at it, then back at the tablet.  
  
Lance isn’t smiling anymore. “Do you have to go?”  
  
“I don’t know, let me check,” Keith says, setting the tablet down on the bed and getting up. “Don’t hang up, okay?”  
  
He goes to the door and opens it to find Kutub standing in the hallway.  
  
“There is a mission soon to collect intel,” he says, without so much as a hello. “Gaggra was going to go but there were complications on his last mission and he cannot make this one. Can you fill his place?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“We will brief you on the details before we depart. Be ready in six vargas.”  
  
“I will,” Keith says, and without another word Kutub goes back down the hallway. Keith shuts the door and goes back to the bed, half expecting to find the tablet’s screen empty, but Lance is still there, fiddling with what looks like the Altean equivalent of a Rubik’s cube.  
  
He hadn’t hung up. Keith had told him not to hang up and even though he owes Keith nothing Lance hadn’t hung up, he is still sitting at his desk and waiting for Keith to return and—  
  
—and it’s dumb, it’s dumb and pathetic and much too small a gesture to fill Keith with so much warmth, but it does, and he has to take a deep breath and calm himself before he sits back down on the bed.  
  
“Hi, I’m back,” he says, picking up the tablet again.  
  
Lance sets aside the cube. “Hey. Is everything good?”  
  
“Yeah, it was just Kutub, there’s a mission in six vargas and they needed someone to join last minute.”  
  
“Oh.” Lance hesitates. “Um, you can go and sleep if you need to, I don’t want you to be tired on your mission.”  
  
Keith hesitates too, because he wants to stay on, wants to keep listening to Lance’s dumb jokes about Blade of Marmora hotel amenities, but—  
  
“Yeah, I should probably go,” he says, and he isn’t sure if it’s good or bad that the regret in his voice is audible. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so could you tell Hunk that I won’t call him tomorrow?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you some other time, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Lance says, smiling slightly. “Stay safe. Good night.”  
  
“Good night,” Keith says, and the screen goes blank.

.^.  
  
Keith usually has no problem paying attention during briefings, save for the occasional stifled yawn, but during this one he keeps having to bite his lip every time Kolivan speaks, because all he can think of is Kolivan flipping his hair like he’s in a Pantene commercial, with _Dandruff-free Or Death_ playing over the action. He actually snickers when Kolivan’s braid swings down over his shoulder as he leans over to point out something on a map, but Kutub throws him a sharp look and he manages to feign a cough instead.  
  
His heart is still heavy, still grows heavier every day, but for the first time since he’s arrived at the Blade he thinks this heaviness might not be permanent, thinks this heaviness might have a chance at going away so long as he ends his days with the lightness of a pair of dark eyes and a nose of scattered freckles and a smile that glows brighter than the sun.

.^.  
  
Keith makes it back to the base long after dinnertime. He shakes his head at the packaged food offered to him, ignoring the way his stomach growls in protest, and goes straight to his room to shower and collapse onto his bed.  
  
The mission had been more complicated than expected, almost compromised at the last second thanks to a mistake made by one of the other members of the Blade (who, unfortunately, was currently in the briefing room getting chewed out by a very irritated Kolivan). Thankfully there had been no injuries, but Keith is still sore and irritated, unable to shake off the lingering stress from the last few minutes of the mission.  
  
He tries to sleep, but he feels restless, unsettled, as if something is missing. He sits up, glances at the time on his tablet, wonders—  
  
He snatches up the tablet, pulls up his contacts. He pauses at Hunk’s name, finger hovering over the button, then with only a tiny tug of guilt scrolls past it to Lance’s name instead and hits ‘call’ for the third time in as many days.  
  
This time Lance picks up after only a couple rings. He’s in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with a bowl of food goo in his lap. There’s a spoon in his mouth and he’s smiling around it at Keith, which is kind of gross and kind of endearing at the same time.  
  
“Hi,” Lance says, and even with the word muffled by the spoon Keith can hear the happiness in his voice. It’s the first time he’s answered without sounding upset or suspicious, and a knot in Keith’s chest unravels.  
  
“Hi,” says Keith, smiling back, then: “Hunk’s gonna hate that you’re on the counter.”  
  
Lance shrugs and takes the spoon out of his mouth to stick it in the bowl. “What Hunk doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He sets the tablet down, probably propped up against one of the smaller machines on the counter. “How did the mission go? Is everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah, it was fine.”  
  
“Do you want me to get Hunk? I think he’s with the Yellow Lion, he said he wanted to do a maintenance check of his machinery.”  
  
“No, it’s fine, I’ll talk to him some other time. I wanted to talk to you.”  
  
“Okay” is all Lance says, but Keith can tell he’s pleased by the way his mouth curves up at the corner.  
  
There is a pause, for once content and not tense. It’s broken by a tiny squeak. Lance looks down.  
  
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you out.” He scoots away from the tablet so Keith’s view of his surroundings is expanded. “Say hello, Keith.”  
  
Keith isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to be saying hello to, until he spots one of the mice balancing on Lance’s knee.  
  
“Oh, uh, hi—Plachu?”  
  
The mouse glares at Keith and gives an offended squeak.  
  
“This is Platt,” Lance corrects. He shakes his head, heaves a sigh, then looks down at the mouse—Platt—and clicks his tongue. “Kids these days have no respect for their mice elders.”  
  
Platt squeaks his agreement. He gives Keith the stink eye, then looks up at Lance expectantly. Lance picks up a different spoon than the one he had been using and feeds Platt with it.  
  
“Sorry?” Keith offers, but Platt ignores him in favor of gorging on food goo.  
  
“There’s no apology for being _racist_ , Keith,” Lance says, with another dramatic sigh. “I bet you think all mice look the same.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes. “I know they all look different, I just forgot his name—”  
  
Platt glares at him again, though the effect is somewhat ruined by the way his cheeks are puffed out with food.  
  
“That’s very insulting, Keith!” Lance says indignantly, though Keith can see the sparkle in his eyes. “What if someone ‘just forgot’ _your_ name? Wouldn’t that offend you?”  
  
Keith scoffs. “I’m pretty sure only two people here even know what my name is, so no, it probably wouldn’t.”  
  
There is a pause, and the sparkle in Lance’s eyes is gone, and Keith is cursing himself, because this is supposed to be fun and jokey and he didn’t have to ruin it with the serious, pathetically lonely atmosphere here—   
  
Platt squeaks again.  
  
“What did he say?” Keith asks.  
  
Lance looks at Platt, then at him, then down at the bowl of food goo.  
  
“He says,” he begins, scooping out another spoonful and offering it to Platt, “that he is sad most of the Marmorites don’t know your name, and that he misses you.”  
  
Keith opens his mouth to ask how Platt managed to say all that in a couple of squeaks, or how Lance even knows what the hell Platt is saying when only Allura can actually understand the mice—but then he sees how red Lance’s ears are, how the task of feeding Platt seems to suddenly require all his attention, how Platt side-eyes him over the spoon as if to say, _don’t fuck this up, human_ , and it clicks.  
  
“I see,” he says finally. “Well, uh—I’m glad he cares. And I miss him too.”  
  
Lance peeks at him through his lashes. He catches Keith’s eye, then hurriedly looks down at the bowl again.  
  
“That’s nice,” he says, a little breathlessly. He takes out another spoonful of food goo, apparently still busy feeding Platt. “I bet you say that to all the mice, though.”  
  
“Of course,” Keith replies. “I miss all the mice.” And then, with a warm thrill of anticipation, watching him intently for his reaction, “But I miss Platt the most.”  
  
Lance drops the bowl. There is a resounding crash. Platt jumps off his leg and onto the counter in alarm.  
  
“Shit!”  
  
Lance hops off the counter and out of view. Platt looks at Keith, smirks, then clasps his tiny paws and makes a kissy face.  
  
Keith scowls. “Shut up,” he hisses.  
  
Platt titters into his paw, tiny squeaks in quick succession.  
  
“All right, so good news/bad news. Good news: it didn’t break,” Lance says, popping back into view and waving the now-empty bowl around. “It just sounded like it broke.”  
  
He speaks evenly, but his ears are even redder than before, and Keith has to bite back a pleased grin at the sight.  
  
“It kind of sounded like the entire kitchen broke.”  
  
“Yeah, sound carries spookily well in here for some reason,” Lance says. “Also, the bad news is that the bowl hit like four other things. Machines. Utilities. Appliances? I don’t know what this stuff would collectively be called. But the food goo is everywhere now.” He sets the bowl on the counter next to Platt, who immediately pokes his nose in to see if there’s any residual goo he can swipe. Lance grabs a couple of kitchen towels and ducks back out of sight. “I gotta clean this up,” says his disembodied voice. “Don’t hang up, this won’t take long.”  
  
“I won’t,” Keith promises. He leans back against his pillow, watches Platt’s tail wiggle in the air as he tips himself face-first into the bowl. “I think Platt’s in heaven.”  
  
The top of Lance’s head just barely comes into view. His hair is longer, Keith realizes, long enough that it’s curling a little. He wonders what it’d look like if Lance kept growing it out, if it’d curl around his ears and neck.   
  
“Platt!” Lance exclaims, outraged. “That’s unhygienic!”   
  
“Says the guy who was sitting on the kitchen counter,” Keith says.  
  
Platt’s tail makes a complicated movement that Keith takes as appreciation for his solidarity. Or maybe it was just in reaction to a particularly delicious morsel of goo. Keith isn’t really sure.  
  
“You can’t see me cause I’m scrubbing food goo off this weird dishwasher,” Lance’s voice says, the top of his head dropping out of view, “but I’m making a mean face at you. You’re supposed to be on _my_ side, Keith, not Platt’s.”  
  
“I’m trying to make it up to him for being racist against mice.”  
  
“You can’t atone for mouse racism by supporting bad hygiene practices! That’s irresponsible!” Lance comes back into view, holding the now-stained kitchen towels. He wads them up, looks across the room to where the kitchen’s laundry chute is, then launches them. “KOBE!”  
  
There’s a second of suspense, and then Lance’s face falls.  
  
“Did you miss?” Keith asks, smirking.  
  
Lance side-eyes him.  
  
“…Maybe,” he says with dignity.  
  
“So yes.”  
  
“Shut up,” Lance grumbles. “Towels are hard to aim properly.”  
  
Keith’s smirk grows. “Whatever you say, sharpshooter.”  
  
“Shut up,” Lance repeats, though there’s a smile tugging at his lips. He looks down at Platt and pokes his side. “Hey. Stop before you make yourself sick.”  
  
Platt tips himself back out of the bowl. There is food goo all around his snout and a dreamy expression on his face. He toddles towards Lance, who cups him in his hands.  
  
“Say bye to Keith,” he says.  
  
Platt squeaks and Keith, feeling a little silly, says ‘bye’ in return. Lance bends to set Platt down on the floor, then hoists himself back up onto the counter.  
  
“So,” he says, “have you heard about Coran’s new concept for the Voltron show?”  
  
“No,” Keith says. “Shiro mentioned the shows but he didn’t go into it much. He said they’ve been working really well but I don’t think he likes them much.”  
  
“No one does,” says Lance cheerfully, “except me, of course, because I’m a natural-born performer.” He dims a little. “But the new concept is kind of—unpleasant? We all get personas now. Pidge has to say meaningless scientific crap, Shiro is some kind of superhero, Allura has to pretend to be you—”  
  
“Me?” Keith interrupts, bewildered. “Why?”  
  
Lance shrugs. “Coran said people don’t know that you left so Allura has to pretend to be you. Which mostly just means she stands around scowling—yeah, like that,” he says, grinning as Keith scowls. “The worst one is Hunk’s, though. He’s been made into some kinda dumb comedic relief who falls over a lot and farts at inconvenient times and doesn’t contribute to any of our battles.”  
  
“That,” Keith says, his scowl deepening, “is really horrible.”  
  
“Yeah, Hunk hates it. I’ve been trying to get Coran to change his character but he won’t budge.” Lance shifts to lean against the cabinet. “He’s been really weird lately. I’m kind of worried about him.”  
  
He talks for a little longer about how Coran’s been acting, but Keith finds it hard to pay attention, because when Lance leans against the cabinet his head tilts a little and Keith is embarrassingly transfixed by the slope of his neck. He thinks again about Lance’s hair growing out and curling around the nape of his neck, thinks about those curls catching on his gloves as he runs his fingers through them.  
  
“…only accurate thing about this show is the persona he gave to me,” Lance is saying when Keith blinks back to the present.  
  
“What character did he give you?”  
  
Lance grins, but not the full, delighted grin Keith has grown accustomed to. It’s cocky, cheeky, almost a smirk, the kind usually accompanied by one of Lance’s dumb attempts at flirting.  
  
“Loverboy Lance,” Lance drawls, shooting a finger gun at the screen.  
  
To Keith’s chagrin he feels his face heat.  
  
“I dunno,” he says, grateful his voice is steady. “That seems pretty inaccurate to me.”  
  
Lance scrunches up his face. “Okay, first of all, _rude_ ,” he says. “Second of all, you’re only saying that cause you haven’t seen me in action.” He throws out his arms with a flourish. “Let me set the stage for you.”  
  
He proceeds to explain, in great detail and with a lot of hand waving and as much physical demonstration as he can manage in a kitchen, his routine as Loverboy Lance. It’s ridiculous and over-the-top and (sort of, kind of, possibly, maybe a little) cute, and after a few difficult seconds of trying and failing to remain stoic, Keith caves and starts laughing.  
  
It’s not like he hasn’t laughed since leaving the castle ship, but this feels different. He tells himself it’s just the particulars of the story, or because his stress from the mission has finally melted away, or the sheer absurdity of Lance’s attempt to stick out his leg in a copy of one of his acrobatic moves while sitting on a narrow kitchen counter, but he knows it’s wholly due to the fact that Lance is the one making him laugh. Lance, who forgave him far too quickly than he deserves, who feeds food goo to mice, who is making a fool of himself just to make Keith laugh.  
  
It takes him a minute to realize that Lance has stopped describing his routine and is just sitting still on the counter, watching him quietly.  
  
“What?” Keith asks, suddenly nervous. “Is something wrong?”  
  
“You look so nice when you laugh,” Lance says.  
  
The words sound involuntary, like something meant to be only thought but that tripped out of his mouth anyway. Keith blinks at him, heart beating double time, uncertain if he should respond or pretend he hadn’t heard.  
  
Lance’s eyes are wide.  
  
“Shit,” he says, “shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Keith says quickly, cursing himself for not reacting sooner, “don’t worry about it—”  
  
Lance looks increasingly distressed. “I know you don’t like compliments from me, I don’t know why I said that, I’m sorry—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Keith says, cutting him off, “really, don’t apologize, it’s fine.”  
  
Lance looks away. His ears are red again. The unsettled feeling is back in Keith’s chest, cold and twisting.  
  
“It’s late,” Lance says abruptly, starting to slide off the counter. “I should—”  
  
“No,” Keith says, then flushes when Lance looks at him in surprise. “I mean, if you really want to go then that’s fine, but don’t go just because of—that.”  
  
Lance hesitates.  
  
“Please,” says Keith, and he doesn’t really know what he’s asking but Lance seems to know the answer anyway.  
  
“Okay,” he says. He resettles himself against the cabinet, and the twisty feeling in Keith’s chest resettles too. “Well, um, as I said yesterday, we’re at a planet called Vanxern right now, and let me tell you, the Vanxernians are the cutest aliens I’ve ever seen, even cuter than the Arusians, and I want to knit sweaters for every single one of them.”  
  
He talks on for almost an hour, about diplomatic goofs and signing autographs and the Vanxernians’ obsession with socks. Keith listens with a small smile on his face, thinking about soft hair curling over a brown neck, and his heart is lighter than it has felt in weeks.

.^.  
  
Keith feels kind of bad for replacing Hunk’s call time with Lance’s, so he makes sure to contact Hunk the next evening. Hunk answers with his usual bright smile and cheery “hi there, Keith!” Keith responds with, “I heard about Coran’s character for you in the Voltron show.”  
  
Hunk visibly deflates.  
  
“Oh.” He looks down at his hands, which are twisting together anxiously. “Um, yeah, Coran came up with them pretty recently but they seem to be, like, more popular than what we were doing before.”  
  
Keith looks at his twisted-together hands. In his opinion, twisted-together-hands Hunk is a Hunk that shouldn’t ever exist. Brightly-smiling Hunk, yes. Glaring-daggers-at-people-who-hurt-his-friends Hunk, sure. Gasping-excitedly-at-fancy-machinery Hunk, absolutely. But twisted-together-hands Hunk makes Keith want to punch a wall, or maybe the person responsible for this version of Hunk existing.  
  
“But the personas aren’t suited to your actual personalities,” he says finally. “They’re more like stereotypes.”  
  
“They are,” Hunk says. “I don’t really like it, but, you know.” He shrugs halfheartedly, still looking down at his hands. “It’s for a good cause, and it’s working, so I shouldn’t really complain—”  
  
“Of course you should,” Keith interrupts, frowning. “Your persona in the show is shit. You’re not some bumbling idiot who’s just here for comic relief. You’re smart and resourceful and the best engineer we could ask for. You make sure we all eat enough and you listen to us when we’re down. You’re important, Hunk.”  
  
Hunk stares at him, long enough that Keith starts to doubt himself.  
  
“What?” he says, replaying his words in his mind and growing more uneasy by the second. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”  
  
Hunk’s hands untwist. “No, it’s just.” He pauses, smiles. “You sound like Lance.”  
  
Keith’s heart skips a beat.  
  
“He said something like that a couple days ago,” Hunk continues. Suddenly his eyes narrow. “Did he give you a script? Is that why you were able to say all that?”  
  
“What? No! No, I—” Keith breaks off as Hunk chuckles. “Oh, that was—you were joking.”  
  
There is a short pause.  
  
“He’s been in a much better mood lately,” Hunk says, too casually. “He was singing in the shower this morning. And he’s really gotten into the Voltron show stuff, he’s super enthusiastic about it.”  
  
Part of Keith wants to pretend he doesn’t know what Hunk is talking about, but another part of him knows Hunk would see right through that, so he just stammers “That’s—I’m—glad” like the smooth, eloquent person he is.  
  
“I’m sure you are,” Hunk replies, and his smile turns a little dangerous. “Cause if he’d stayed sad for much longer I would have come out to the space taco and murdered you.”  
  
Keith doesn’t doubt it.  
  
“Anyway,” says Hunk airily, his smile returning to normal, “we went to the Balmera today and I got to see Shay again. We had a bit of free time so she gave me a tour of the caves.”  
  
“Just the two of you?” Keith asks, one eyebrow raised. “How _interesting_.”  
  
“Yeah, it was—hey!” Hunk frowns as Keith snickers. “It wasn’t like _that_ , come on, man—ugh, when I said you sound like Lance I didn’t want you to copy him on the teasing, too—stop _laughing_ , everyone here keeps making fun of me, but all we did was walk around—though I guess we did hold hands for a little while—Keith, _no_ , don’t laugh _louder_ —”

.^.  
  
The next Voltron show is broadcast at the Blade of Marmora’s base during dinner. It’s dumb and campy and kind of offensive and embarrassing in places (Hunk looks miserable, and Allura’s imitation of Keith is both hilarious and vaguely insulting), and Keith rolls his eyes and cackles in turns through the entire thing, until—  
  
“Loverboy Lance!” says Coran in his weird hyper announcer voice.  
  
The camera pans to Lance. Keith’s stomach lurches.  
  
It’s still dumb. It’s still campy. It’s still kind of offensive and embarrassing. But as he stares, wide-eyed, at Lance doing his fancy aerial acrobatics, Keith thinks he understands why these stupid shows are working so well.  
  
The Blade member sitting next to him asks if he is feeling all right.  
  
“You are a curious shade of red,” he notes.  
  
Keith resists the urge to press his palms to his cheeks.  
  
“I’m fine,” he says, too quickly, then stands. “I just—I think I’ll skip the rest of the broadcast.”  
  
He doesn’t wait for a response, and almost runs out of the dining hall.

.^.  
  
Keith almost doesn’t call Lance that evening, because even an hour in the training room isn’t enough to get the image of Lance’s acrobatics out of his head. Eventually he marches himself to his room, sits on the edge of the bed, and stares at the tablet.  
  
“Think of the stupid kitchen acrobatics,” he says out loud, but that just makes it worse, because now he has both attractive Lance’s acrobatics and goofy Lance’s efforts to make him laugh stuck in his head, and it’s truly unfair for a person to be handsome _and_ funny.  
  
Keith changes his mind a half dozen times as he brushes his teeth, but fortunately (unfortunately? He isn’t certain which one it is) the decision in his mind as he gets into bed is to call Lance.  
  
So he does.  
  
And immediately regrets it, because Lance is in his room, sitting at his desk again and wearing his pajamas, and he looks soft and comfortable and his skin is glowing and his hair is getting so _fucking_ curly and Keith kind of wants to combust.  
  
“Hi,” he says.  
  
“Hi,” says Lance, beaming, and between that and the radiance of his skin Keith’s chances of combustion increase by about eight hundred percent. “Coran said our show today aired at the Blade’s headquarters! Did you see it?”  
  
For a split second Keith considers lying, but he’s pretty sure he’ll give himself away at some point later if he tries to do that, so he says, “Yeah, I saw part of it.”  
  
“And? What did you think?” Lance leans in towards the screen, smirking, and something hot curls low in Keith’s stomach. “Does Loverboy Lance live up to the hype?”  
  
He does finger guns at the screen, still smirking, and then he fucking _winks_ , and Keith is painfully, ridiculously flustered.  
  
“I—it—it was really—stupid,” he stammers, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels.  
  
“ _Rude_ ,” Lance says, with feigned indignation. “I have thousands of fans who beg to differ.”  
  
“Fans,” Keith echoes flatly, thankful for the opportunity to make fun of him instead of blushing furiously. “You have…fans.”  
  
“Yes, fans! I told you before that I sign autographs!” He winks again. “The lads and ladies here love me.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you like all the attention.”  
  
“I’m definitely not gonna complain about it,” Lance replies. “Plus I get a lot of presents, which is cool but sometimes kinda weird. At our last show a guy came to get my autograph and he tried to give me what I think was a bunch of turquoise bananas? Coran said it’s a very romantic gesture on the planet where the guy was from. And then today someone had me sign their program with their lipstick and then just told me to keep it. Allura liked the shade so I gave it to her.”  
  
There’s a sour taste in Keith’s mouth.  
  
“How is that safe?” he asks, too abruptly. “What if someone tries to sneak in something dangerous?”  
  
“Everything is screened,” Lance assures him.  
  
“Wouldn’t it better to not accept presents in the first place?”  
  
Lance shrugs. “Not really. People like giving them, and it’s not hurting us to take them, so why shouldn’t we?”  
  
“Because—” Keith says, “because—”  
  
He struggles to think of a valid reason, since _because I’m a possessive idiot who despite having no claim over you really hates the idea of you getting romantic presents from fans_ isn’t exactly something he can say aloud.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “It just seems risky.”  
  
“I promise we’re being careful,” Lance says. He yawns, rests his elbow on the desk and leans his chin in his hand. “It was a pretty busy day today. The planet we’re on has a junkyard that’s basically just free machine parts, so I went with Hunk and Pidge to help them carry back whatever they wanted…”  
  
He goes on for a bit, and Keith is listening, he really is, but Lance’s new position brings his face closer to the screen, and even in the castle ship’s atrocious lighting his skin is still fucking _glowing_ , and it’s beautiful and mesmerizing and supremely distracting and Keith thinks it’d be smooth to touch, thinks that if he pressed his lips to the corner of Lance’s mouth it’d be soft and—  
  
“Why is your face like that?” he blurts.  
  
Lance blinks, trailing off in the middle of a story about Pidge trying to carry a robot part bigger than herself. “What?”  
  
Keith’s face burns for what feels like the tenth time that day. “I mean—it’s just that—your skin is—your face—” Keith breaks off, then gestures lamely at the screen. “You’re all…glowing.”  
  
“Oh.” Lance slants a slightly suspicious glance at him, but he just says, “Me and Pidge and Allura had a pampering party after the show.”  
  
“A—pampering party?” Keith repeats, bewildered.  
  
“You know, face masks, braiding hair, painting nails.” Lance holds his hand close to the tablet. “See?”  
  
The nail on the third finger of his hand is painted with a tiny bi flag.  
  
“That’s really—” Keith stumbles, unsure of what compliment would be appropriate. “Detailed.”  
  
“Allura did it for me,” Lance explains, putting his hand down. “She did Pidge’s nails too, and then me and Pidge braided her hair, which was fun but kind of an ordeal. The mice helped too and it still took forever.”  
  
“I can imagine,” Keith says, then, hesitantly, “I didn’t think Pidge was into that kind of stuff, though.”  
  
“Not usually,” Lance says, “but she was feeling dysphoric today and it makes her feel better if she does pretty, girly stuff. Not,” he adds quickly, “that doing your nails and hair is just for girls. And obviously she doesn’t have to be pretty or traditionally girly to be a girl, she’s a girl no matter what. It’s just helpful for her to do stuff like this sometimes.” His mouth twists. “She’s also kinda down cause Matt left for a rebel mission yesterday. It shouldn’t take too long, and she can keep in touch with him, but it’s still hard.”  
  
“I hope he comes back soon.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Lance says, and the sour taste is back in Keith’s mouth again, the stupid, sharp sense of possession that he shouldn’t have, he _shouldn’t_ , it isn’t _right_ —  
  
“Hey, can I ask you something?”  
  
“Sure,” Keith says, wary of Lance’s sudden seriousness. “Is everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah, I just.” Lance hesitates. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ve found out anything about your mom. Or anyone on her side of the family.”  
  
Keith stiffens.  
  
“If you’d rather not talk about it then I totally understand,” Lance adds quickly. “I was just wondering if you’d had any time to look into anything.”  
  
“No,” Keith says, then clarifies, “to both. I haven’t found anything and I haven’t asked around either.”  
  
Lance just nods. “Cool,” he says, then, “I don’t think I finished the story about Pidge carrying the giant robot part, right?”  
  
Keith shakes his head.  
  
“Cool,” Lance says again. “So Pidge tried to pick up a part that was basically the size of Shiro…”

.^.  
  
The next time Keith calls Pidge, she is subdued.  
  
“Matt’s not back yet,” she says, speaking more quietly than she has in weeks. Quiet Pidge makes Keith feel like twisted-together-hands Hunk does: unsettled, unnatural, unhesitant to beat the hell out of the person responsible for her acting like this. “He’s been gone four days already.”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” Keith says, doing his best to sound reassuring.  
  
“I hope so.” Pidge sighs. “It’s not that bad, I can still call him and make sure he’s okay. I don’t know why I’m so mopey about it.”  
  
“Being able to talk to him doesn’t mean you aren’t going to miss him.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Pidge, then smiles a little. “Just like with you.”  
  
A warm feeling fills him up, like drinking hot chocolate on a cold day. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if it’s weird to be so happy that Pidge compared missing him to missing her brother, so he just smiles back and says, “Lance said you all had a party? A—a pampering party?”  
  
Pidge brightens. “Yeah, we did!” She waves her hands in front of the tablet, too fast for Keith to see anything more than a blur of pink and white and blue. “Allura painted my nails for me! And Lance braided a ribbon in my hair, see?” She turns her head and Keith can see a tiny green ribbon woven into her mane of hair.  
  
“It’s very pretty,” he says.  
  
Pidge beams. “Lance says we can have a pampering party every week,” she says, then, with a wicked gleam in her eye, “and when Matt comes back I’m gonna make him join us. I can’t wait to put Allura’s makeup on him. He’s gonna hate it.”  
  
“Won’t he just be excited to be that close to Allura?”  
  
“That’s part of my master plan,” Pidge explains. “He hates wearing makeup but if Allura’s there he won’t say no to anything I do.” She rubs her hands together evilly. “I’m gonna give him a glittery green cat eye.”  
  
Keith snickers. “I’m sure he’ll look great.”  
  
“He will be the belle of the castle ship,” Pidge says, and Keith snickers again. “Seriously, though, I’m getting really good at eyeliner. I used to practice applying it on Matt on earth and during the pampering party Lance let me practice on him.”  
  
An image pops into Keith’s mind, of Lance’s dark eyes ringed with smudged black liner. His stomach flips.  
  
“I don’t.” Why can’t he talk all of a sudden? “I don’t remember him wearing it when I talked to him.”  
  
“He washed it off a while after I applied it, he said it was making his eyes itch.” Pidge frowns. “I hope that doesn’t mean it’s spoiled. I should probably look into that before we use it again.”  
  
She chatters on for a while longer, about the ridiculous looks she plans to give Matt and the levels she’s beaten on Killbot Phantasm I, but Keith is only half listening, his mind still conjuring stupidly, unnecessarily intriguing images of Lance in fucking _eyeliner_.

.^.  
  
For the next two weeks he calls Lance almost every day, even when he’s scheduled to talk to someone else on the castle ship, too. Sometimes they only talk for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, but he always calls and Lance always answers.  
  
He wonders if Lance thinks it’s weird that he went from never calling him to calling him constantly. Keith feels like maybe he should say something, an excuse or a lie or maybe (maybe, maybe, maybe) the truth, but Lance never says anything, never acts like the abruptness of the change is odd, so Keith never says anything either.

.^.

Until now the Blade only sent Keith on missions that took two or three days at the most, and always gave him enough time and communications clearance to inform at least one of the people on the castle ship ahead of time. One evening, however, Kolivan comes to tell him that he is being sent on a lengthier mission, five days, six at the most, and that he is needed in the briefing room immediately.  
  
They send him and the other Blade members out right after the briefing, with strict instructions to stay on course and not communicate with anyone except one another and Kolivan. Keith thinks longingly of the tablet sitting on his desk, and hopes hopes hopes that Lance doesn’t think he’s abandoned him again.

.^.  
  
(He’s dumb. He’s dumb and stupid and Kolivan will be furious but he couldn’t just _leave_ Harjka, not when leaving the Blade member whose name he didn’t know had haunted him for weeks, not when none of the people on this mission have eaten or slept properly in five days and are all dead on their feet, not when he wants to be able to call Lance and look him in the eye and not feel like he’s halfway a murderer.)  
  
(He’s injured in the process, but though he’s dumb enough to go back for Harjka he’s not dumb enough to think his injuries will excuse him from Kolivan’s lecture. He sits in the medical wing as he numbly swallows the pills that’ll heal his broken ribs and rubs salve onto his burns, and wonders when his primary concern became the ire of his superior and not his own physical health.)  
  
(He looks around the medical wing, at the doctors who only speak when giving instructions to the patients, at the patients who only speak when telling the doctors if they feel any pain. He remembers waiting outside healing pods for hours, remembers falling out of a healing pod into warm, waiting arms and a flurry of friendly hugs, and he thinks his broken heart might hurt more than his broken ribs.)

.^.  
  
Injuries don’t excuse one from Kolivan’s lectures, nor from post-mission meetings. Keith is slumped against the wall, doing his best to pay attention through the haze of hunger and exhaustion and the tenderness of rapidly-healed injuries, when he hears his name.  
  
“…all I have to say regarding the mission, but before you are dismissed—Keith?”  
  
Keith straightens with a jolt. Dread rises within him; he always hates when Kolivan reminds him not to go back for people, but he especially hates it when he does so in front of other members of the Blade. “Yes, sir?”  
  
Kolivan’s expression is even more carefully blank than usual. “In future you would do well to inform the Red Paladin ahead of time when you are going on a lengthy mission.”  
  
The Red Paladin?  
  
“I—what?” Keith stammers, confused.  
  
“He has contacted me no less than seven times to,” Kolivan pauses briefly, “to ask—”  
  
_Demand_ , Keith’s brain supplies helpfully, while a voice in his head that sounds a bit like Pidge cackles.  
  
“—for updates on your well-being,” Kolivan continues. “Perhaps you should let him know when you will be unable to communicate with him for several days at a time, so he will not harass other members of the Blade for information regarding your safety and health.”  
  
Keith thinks he can hear snickering among the others in the room. His face burns.  
  
“Um,” he says eloquently, and hears another snicker. Incredibly he feels his face grow hotter; he has a fervent wish to put his mask back on. “I understand, sir. I’ll let him know next time.”  
  
“Good.” Kolivan’s face is still staunchly impassive. “Dismissed.”  
  
Keith turns and leaves the room as fast as he can without running.

.^.

He wants to go straight to his room to check his tablet, but he forces himself to wait. The anticipation eats at him, grows more and more as he goes about his business before he can finally go to his room. He eats his cold packaged dinner in the dining hall, trying and failing to keep himself from guessing how many missed calls from Lance there would be; he takes a shower, wondering if Lance had just called or if he’d left messages too; he brushes his teeth, staring at himself in the grimy mirror and marveling at how the prospect of even a single message from Lance could make his eyes look so bright when they’re underscored by such dark circles.  
  
He switches off the light, gets into bed, picks up the tablet and checks his messages with a little thrill of excitement.  
  
He is not disappointed.  
  
“ _Fifteen_ ,” Keith whispers into the dark room, with a pleased, helpless laugh. “Fuck, Lance.”  
  
Eight missed calls, six texts, and one video message. Keith checks the texts first.

**Lance McClain:** psst are you okay ur not answering and im worried and pidge showed me that we can text on these things (apparently this has always existed but she just?? didnt tell me about it?? or maybe she did and i wasnt paying attention lmao). anyway I hope u are okay and staying safe

**Lance McClain:** okay so its been another day and no answer so im gonna assume ur on a mission HOWEVER if it turns out u are actually severely injured or dead and the bom didnt tell us im gonna set blade hq on fire with my lion. i asked red and he says he is willing and able to do it. so anyway hopefully u are alive and uninjured. please stay safe

**Lance McClain:** i asked everyone else and u arent calling them either but?? apparently?? they are not worried?? they all told me to calm down and that the bom likes to send people on long impromptu missions all the time and that im overreacting which is Rude. im gonna go be Rude back to them now so bye and stay safe

**Lance McClain** : uh so i just left you a video message and i didnt realize how long it was until after i hit end call so this is my apology because it was OVER AN HOUR LONG god im so needy why am i like this. anyway im really sorry u dont have to watch all of it. or any of it. okay bye for real now stay safe

**Lance McClain:** kolivan is so mean all i did was call him a COUPLE OF TIMES to ask if he could tell me if ur okay and he got so ANNOYED like EXCUSE ME for being WORRIED about u on ur SPOOKY KNIFE NINJA MISSION so anyway if he complains about me when ur back just know that its all LIES i am being perfectly reasonable and he is the one whos bein Rude. bye and stay safe

**Lance McClain:** hey its been five days since we last talked and kolivan just verbally murdered me when i called him again to ask if ur okay so this is just to say that i hope ur doin well and that ur kickin galra butt and stealin intel or whatever it is u do on ur spooky knife ninja missions and that ur staying safe

Keith re-reads the texts over and over, warmth curling within him. He pulls up the video message next; it is, as Lance had written, over an hour long, and it’s already nearly midnight, but Keith’s desire to see him and hear him overrides his exhaustion, so he clicks ‘play.’  
  
He does not regret it. Lance is in especially rare form, telling his story with grand gestures and elaborate expressions, recounting the last Voltron show and the fact that Coran’s been on some kind of alien drug worm for the past couple of months (“what,” Keith says when he gets to that part, “the _fuck_ ”) with a gusto that has Keith laughing more than once. Despite the length of the message it ends all too soon, and he’s left sitting on his bed, staring at the blank tablet and wondering—wishing—wanting—  
  
—it’s one in the morning earth time, but the texts and the message are not enough, and Keith aches to talk to him, to let him know that he’s okay and that he got his messages and that he hasn’t been ignoring him—  
  
He pulls up Lance’s name and presses ‘call’ before he can really think about it. It’s unlikely he’s awake, but Keith want him to know that he called, that he’s thinking about Lance the way Lance had thought about him during the past week, that—  
  
“Keith!”  
  
Lance’s face fills the screen, his expression an odd mix of accusing and delighted.  
  
Keith blinks. “Hi,” he says. “Why are you—”  
  
“You jerk!” Lance half shouts. “Why didn’t you answer any of my messages?”  
  
Panic fills Keith. “I’m sorry, Lance,” he says, speaking too quickly, “I was on a mission and it was last minute and they wouldn’t let me tell anyone and—wait.” He stops and squints at Lance. “You’re joking.”  
  
“Yup,” says Lance, grinning as he leans back on his hands. He’s wearing his pajamas and sitting on the floor of the lounge; Keith thinks the tablet must be propped up on the couch cushions, the way Pidge does it. “Hey, can you move or turn on a light or something? It’s pitch black where you are, I can’t see your face at all.”  
  
“Sure,” Keith says, leaning over to switch the light back on. He turns back to the tablet to find Lance leaning forward again, his brow furrowed. His eyes are roaming over Keith’s face with alarm.  
  
“What—”  
  
“What happened?” Lance asks sharply.  
  
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Keith assures him, belatedly remembering the marks on his face. “There was an explosion and some debris hit me but—”  
  
Lance makes a noise, sort of a strangled mix of _argh_ and _gack_.  
  
“—but it’s just minor injuries and I’m fine,” Keith finishes. He isn’t really sure how to interpret the weird sound Lance had made, so he says, “I didn’t really think you’d still be awake. Why are you up so late?”  
  
Lance ignores him. “What do you mean by ‘minor injuries’?”  
  
“A couple burns on my hand,” Keith says, “and two broken ribs.”  
  
Lance makes the strangled argh-gack noise again.  
  
“That’s not minor,” he manages, the words coming out in a croak. “Shouldn’t you be in a healing pod? Do the Marmorites even have healing pods?”  
  
“No, but they have medication that heals injuries almost as fast as a healing pod. That’s why I’m calling so late, I was in the medical wing.”  
  
“So you’re healed? You’re not in pain?”  
  
“Yes, I’m healed, and no, I’m not in pain.”  
  
Lance doesn’t look convinced. “What about your face? It’s got cuts all over it, shouldn’t you take magic Marmorite medication for that too? Doesn’t it hurt?”  
  
“It’s just a bruise and some cuts, Lance,” Keith says, a bit amused by his insistence. “They’ll heal on their own in a couple days. I can barely even feel them.”  
  
Lance worries his bottom lip for a moment. Keith’s amusement fades.  
  
“Hey. I’m okay. Really.”  
  
For another second Lance is quiet. His hands make an odd movement, as if he’s going to touch the tablet’s screen, but he clasps them together, takes a deep breath, and smiles.  
  
“Okay,” he says simply, though Keith can still see the worry in his eyes. “Um, so to answer your question, me and Hunk had a movie night. He kept falling asleep towards the end of the last movie so I told him to go on to his room and I stayed here to clean up.”  
  
“What did you watch?”  
  
“I can’t really pronounce the titles, but one of them was an Arusian action movie and two were Altean comedies.”  
  
Keith blinks blankly at him. “Arusian…action movie?”  
  
Lance makes a face. “Yeah, it wasn’t very exciting. It’s hard to take a hero seriously when you just want to knit him a sweater and post cute pictures of him to Instagram.” He sighs. “I miss Instagram. So many adorable animal photos.”  
  
Keith doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so he just says, “What else did you do?”  
  
“Not much,” says Lance. “We’ve mostly just been hanging out cause Coran’s finally got rid of his weird alien drug worm and we had to do damage control for the way the last show ended—but wait, you don’t know about that—”  
  
“No, I do, I saw your message.”  
  
Lance’s mouth opens, closes, opens again.  
  
“You.” He looks caught between puzzled and pleased. “You watched the whole thing?”  
  
It’s Keith’s turn to be puzzled. “Of course. Was I not supposed to?”  
  
“No, I just—” Lance’s ears are red. “It was really long, I sort of thought you’d stop watching after a while.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Okay, well, anyway, because of that we’ve just been sticking around the castle ship and cataloguing which planets are in the alliance now, what roles they’re willing to play on upcoming missions, that kind of thing. Also every time Coran says anything remotely weird we all ask if he’s on more alien drugs.”  
  
He talks for a while longer, hands moving in the air as he speaks, and Keith isn’t sure if it’s the long mission or the lingering soreness of his injuries but it feels almost unbearable that he has to look at Lance through a screen, that he has to settle for a summary of what’s going on in the castle ship, that he can only talk to any of the people who inhabit it for an hour a day.  
  
Lance trails off in the middle of a story about Allura trying to parkour her way across the training deck.  
  
“Are you okay?” he asks, peering at him with his brow furrowed. “You look strange. Does something hurt? Are you tired?”  
  
“No,” Keith says, then, without thinking: “It’s just—I wish I was there.”   
  
There is a short silence, and part of him is working frantically to come up with something to amend his statement, to make it sound less like he’s homesick or misses them or whatever you call this constant yearning to be back in the castle ship and with the other paladins. But part of him is strangely still, strangely calm, strangely content to let the words sit in the air and let Lance look at him and seem to see right into his head and know what he can’t say out loud.  
  
Because he is homesick. He does miss them. Keith doesn’t think much about earth, but when he does it’s of things, not people: his bike, the pineapple pizza Lance teases him for liking, his shack in the desert where he could sit on the roof and watch the sun set. He’s never quite gotten Lance’s longing to see his family, but ever since he left the castle ship he thinks he might understand.  
  
“Then come back,” Lance says, and Keith almost wants to laugh at how simple it sounds.  
  
“I can’t just come back,” he says. “I said I’d work with the Blade.”  
  
“And you have,” Lance says, shrugging, “and now you can say you want to work with us again, and you can come back.”  
  
“That’s not—” For some reason Lance’s tone grates on him; he makes it sound like Keith can just come and go as he pleases, like he hasn’t committed himself to a cause and needs to stick to it. “I can’t just leave.”  
  
“You’re not ‘just leaving,’” Lance says patiently, and Keith scowls because he sounds a bit like he’s explaining something to a toddler. “You’re not running away or abandoning them, it’s just a matter of telling Kolivan—”  
  
“Talking to Kolivan is never ‘just a matter’ of anything!” Keith says heatedly. “Saying hello to Kolivan is such a fucking ordeal, I can’t just go up to him and say I don’t want to work with the Blade anymore—”  
  
“But you don’t,” Lance points out, and it’s infuriating that Lance is so calm, infuriating that he can look at Keith and know his heart is heavy and force him to talk about this and—  
  
—and Keith wants to snap his tablet in half and throw it across the room.  
  
“I do,” he says instead through gritted teeth, trying to keep his voice even. “I like being useful.”  
  
“You could be useful here,” Lance says.  
  
Keith makes an impatient noise. “There are five lions and six people. That leaves one person left over, so how the fuck could I be useful—”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, wait.” Lance leans towards the screen, frowning, and for a moment Keith feels a vindictive pleasure at having shaken him out of his infuriating calm. In the next moment his spite is replaced with concern, because Lance looks—distraught?  
  
“Did you leave because of what I said?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The—when I—” Lance falters. His brow furrows; he seems to be piecing something together as he speaks. “I told you I thought I should step aside when Shiro got back because there are five lions and six people and that’s one person too many.”  
  
Keith blinks. He opens his mouth, closes it, looks at Lance and sees the growing horror in his eyes.  
  
“Oh my god,” Lance whispers. “I’m the one who made you leave.” He covers his face with his hands. “Oh my god, oh my _god_ , Pidge is gonna kill me—”  
  
“Why Pidge?” Keith asks, then mentally kicks himself, because that is definitely not the most important part of what Lance is saying.  
  
“She misses you the most,” Lance says miserably, his voice muffled by his hands. “I think she’s sad that one of her zero G space bros left right before she got her OG bro back.”  
  
“Her—zero G space bro?” Keith repeats, bewildered.  
  
“Yeah,” Lance says, dropping his hands from his face. “Me and you and Hunk are her zero gravity space bros. And Matt is the original bro. Zero G bros and OG bro.” He makes a face. “The joke works better if you write it, cause the zero and the O look the same.”  
  
“I,” Keith starts, then stops. He thinks of the paladins as his family, has thought of them as such for a while, but he hadn’t known—he hadn’t thought that they also—  
  
There’s a peculiar lump in his throat. “I see.”  
  
Lance peers at him, eyes narrowed. “Are you—” He grins suddenly, and it’s like someone’s turned on a light. “Are you gonna cry?”  
  
“No,” Keith says fiercely. He’s sincerely grateful his voice doesn’t crack, but it does waver a little, and of course Lance notices.  
  
He cackles. “You are!” He crows, pointing at Keith through the screen. “Wow, I can’t believe Mr Grumpypants is gonna cry cause Pidge said he’s her zero G space bro—”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
“—the ninja samurai embraces his emo roots to have a good cry—”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
“—don’t conceal your feelings, Keith,” Lance says earnestly. “Let your emotions out!” He throws out his arms and starts singing at the top of his lungs. “LET IT GOOOOOO! LET IT GOOOOO! CAN’T HOLD IT BACK ANYMOOOOOORE—”  
  
“Lance I swear I will hang up—”  
  
“—LET IT GOOOOOOO, LET IT GOOO—oh, hi, Shiro,” Lance says suddenly in his normal voice, abashed. He looks off screen towards the door. Keith can sort of hear Shiro’s voice but it’s too quiet for him to make out the words. “Uh, yeah, sorry, I’ll keep it down. I was just—yeah, sorry.”  
  
He looks back at the screen and sees that Keith is smirking.  
  
“Shut up,” he says, but there’s no bitterness to it, and he smiles.  
  
Keith’s smirk melts into a smile of his own, and for a few seconds they just look at each other. Keith feels unusually settled, like he could sit here for hours and watch Lance’s mussed hair and crinkly smile and bright eyes. He’s trying to figure how long he can get away with doing just that when he remembers what they’d been talking about before Lance’s musical outburst.  
  
“To be clear, I didn’t leave because of what you said,” he says, and Lance’s smile fades. “I mean, the reasoning is similar but I wasn’t thinking about it because of what you said. I just.” He swallows, looks away from the screen, frowns. “I need to be useful, and I’m not like Shiro. I can’t feel like I’m helping out when I’m not a paladin. Here I get to do something every day and feel like I’m a productive member of the team.”  
  
Lance’s mouth twists. “I guess I get that.”  
  
Keith meets his gaze again. “Yeah.”  
  
“But you know,” Lance continues, “you can come back whenever you want. We’ll find something for you to do. And if there’s nothing for you to do we won’t think any less of you for not always being busy. You’re allowed to just exist. You don’t always have to do something. And things always work out. Leave the math to Pidge, remember?”  
  
Technically Keith knows this, but he isn’t sure he’s ever actually believe it. But he’s already argued with Lance tonight and he doesn’t want to fight again, so he just nods.  
  
“And you should visit,” Lance adds. “We’re doing shows on a couple planets near the Blade of Marmora’s base next week. Maybe you could come see one of them?”  
  
The thought of seeing Loverboy Lance’s routine in person makes Keith feel like he might catch fire, but he just nods again and says, “Maybe.”  
  
“Cool.” Lance yawns and stretches; his arms swing up above his head and he rolls his shoulders and arches to crack his back and Keith thinks he might catch fire right now. “Hey, I might fall asleep, so—”  
  
Keith glances guiltily at the clock. “You can go, it’s fine.”  
  
Lance shakes his head, yawning again. He moves to lie down on his side on the couch, folding his hands beneath his cheek. He’s facing the tablet and Keith’s heart skips a beat because like this he can almost pretend that Lance is lying down next to him. “Nah, I was gonna say you can stay on if you want. I’m a very pretty sleeper.”  
  
I’m sure you are, Keith thinks, but he makes himself snort. “I bet you snore.”  
  
“I do _not_ ,” Lance protests, his nose wrinkling. “How dare you insinuate such a thing.” He closes his eyes. “I bet _you_ snore.”  
  
Keith hesitates for a second, then lies down too. He props the tablet up on the wall next to his pillow and this is a terrible, terrible idea, because now it’s _really_ easy to pretend he’s lying down next to Lance and it takes every ounce of restraint he has to not reach out and touch the screen. He thinks, briefly, madly, that he would trade everything in the universe to be next to Lance for real right now instead of looking at him through a tablet. “Only a little.”  
  
Lance opens one eye. “Ugh, of course you do.” He closes his eye again, and his next words are more of a sigh. “I actually have trouble sleeping.”  
  
“Really?” Keith asks, shifting so his hands are beneath his cheek like Lance’s. “I would have thought you’re a heavy sleeper.”  
  
“My family is really big and really loud,” Lance mumbles, and his voice is soft and sleepy and Keith’s chest hurts with how much he likes the sound of it like this. “No one sleeps well. Except my oldest sister. She could probably sleep through one of our battles.” He smiles, small and wistful. “Once she slept through a thunderstorm so severe it blew the roof off the building across the street.”  
  
“Holy shit.”  
  
Lance opens his eyes and chuckles. The sound shoots right through Keith. “Yeah. She was sick so she stayed at home while the rest of us went to my cousin’s graduation. We heard about the storm and we thought for sure she’d been blown away.”  
  
It occurs to Keith that he doesn’t know the names of any of Lance’s relatives. He feels weirdly ashamed of not knowing, so he says, “What’s your sister’s name?”  
  
“Elena,” Lance says. “She’s an accountant and she lives in San Francisco so I only got to see her a couple times a year. But she’d Skype us every few days and she texted me all the time. I’m her favorite brother.”  
  
Keith raises an eyebrow. “Are you her only brother?”  
  
“Maybe,” Lance says haughtily, and Keith huffs a laugh. Lance smiles. “She’s the best. She was the first person I came out to. And she helped me tell mami and papi.”  
  
“She sounds nice.”  
  
“She is.” Lance closes his eyes again, as if he can see his sister imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. “She and Radhika, her wife, adopted twins a year ago. They’re three—no, maybe four? I guess they’d be four now. Or five. And they’ve probably started kindergarten.”  
  
He’s back to sounding wistful. Keith wishes he could do something about it.  
  
“Um.” He racks his brain for something to say. “What is the rest of your family like?”  
  
“I have two other older sisters and one little sister,” Lance says, opening his eyes, “and they’re all huge nerds, except for Carmen, who managed to inherit the cool gene like I did,” and from there he tells Keith about birthday parties and road trips and pranks on their father and how his mother gives the best hugs in the entire universe (“even better than Hunk’s, if you can believe it”). He talks and talks and talks and Keith can feel how much Lance misses them in every syllable.  
  
“…and then…” Lance says sleepily more than an hour later, yawning for the third time in less than a minute. “Abuelita said…we should just…put me in the dress…cause I’m the prettiest anyway…”  
  
He trails off, his eyes falling shut. Keith waits and after a couple seconds Lance’s breathing slows. His eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and he’s pouting a little and his freckles are like stardust scattered across his skin and Keith finds himself agreeing emphatically with Lance’s abuelita.  
  
“AH!”  
  
Lance awakens with a yell. Keith nearly falls out of his bed. He scowls.  
  
“What the hell was that for?”  
  
“I’m not asleep!” Lance half shouts. “I’m not falling asleep!”  
  
“It’s okay if you do,” Keith assures him. “Isn’t that why you lay down?”  
  
“Yeah, but,” Lance’s voice lowers as sleep overtakes him again, “I like talking to you.”  
  
Keith bites his lip to keep from smiling. “We can talk some other time when you’re not about to pass out.”  
  
“Okay…” Lance sighs, eyes already closing. “Don’t hang up.”  
  
“I won’t,” Keith promises.  
  
“It’ll be like a sleepover,” Lance says.   
  
“I’ve never been to one.”  
  
“Aw, man, you’ve been missing out…when you come back we’ll have to have one…Hunk makes the best pillow forts so I’ll…get him to make one in here and we can all…tell ghost stories by flashlight…and do face masks…and maybe we can figure out if there’s some kind of alien substitute for marshmallows…and make s’mores…”  
  
“That sounds fun,” Keith says, but Lance’s breathing is already evening out again. He hesitates, then says quietly, “And I like talking to you too.”  
  
Lance smiles in his sleep, though Keith isn’t sure if it’s involuntary or because of what he said. He closes his eyes and knocks out almost immediately. He wakes what feels like a couple of hours later and sees that Lance’s eyes are half open, watching him. The expression on his face is soft and open and it makes Keith’s heart clench.  
  
And then Lance speaks, and it’s so quiet and Keith is so sleepy and he isn’t sure if he’s dreaming or not.  
  
“I was lying earlier,” Lance whispers. “Pidge doesn’t miss you the most. I do.”  
  
Keith wants to respond, but his eyes are sliding shut and all he can do is smile at Lance before falling asleep again.

.^.

Preparing for Naxzela is a whirlwind of activity, of fine-tuning every aspect of every role until the perfect person has been selected for it, of spending hours on the training deck until they are more machine than man, of going over every second of the plan until they can recite it in their sleep.  
  
Keith feels a sort of cold excitement in the days leading up to it. This is what he is born for, what he is made to do: real things, concrete things, things that he can look at later and say, _I did this, I made it happen, I was useful and here is evidence of my usefulness_.  
  
Kolivan orders everyone to turn in early the last full night before the blitz begins. Keith lies awake for a half hour, anticipation and anxiety churning in his gut, and then he sits up and reaches for his tablet.  
  
When he answers Lance is sitting up in his bed too, looking exactly how Keith feels.  
  
“This is weird,” Lance says, by way of greeting. “I’m excited and nervous at the same time.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“We’ll take down a third of the Galra Empire,” Lance goes on, “which is awesome!”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says again.  
  
“But it also kinda feels too good to be true, you know?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And the really weird part is that I’m not really scared? Obviously I want everyone to come out of this okay, but I’m not really scared for myself.”  
  
Keith opens his mouth to respond, but Lance cuts him off.  
  
“If you say ‘yeah’ again I’m gonna shoot you with my lion tomorrow.”  
  
“Fine,” Keith says. “ _Yes_.”  
  
Lance makes an outraged noise as Keith snickers. For a moment they are both quiet. Lance settles back against his pillows, his eyes suddenly serious.  
  
“What do you miss most about earth?” he asks, almost whispering.  
  
“My bike,” Keith says.  
  
Lance’s mouth quirks. “Really?”  
  
“It’s not a weird thing to miss,” Keith says defensively, but Lance holds up a placating hand.  
  
“Chill, I’m not making fun of your answer.” He is silent for a second, then, “I miss my mami’s hugs. And my papi’s hugs. And my siblings’ hugs. All of my family’s hugs, actually. McClains are fantastic at hugging.”  
  
Keith smiles. “I’m sure you are.” He remembers, in a flash, as if from another life, when Lance had hugged him in the Black Lion’s hangar. “Or—I know you are.”  
  
Lance smiles back, and for the first time Keith truly realizes, with a sick swoop of his stomach, that this might be the last time he ever talks to Lance.  
  
He. Does not want to think about that. But he also doesn’t want to _not_ think about it, because the memory of the hug reminds him of a much less pleasant memory, and if this does turn out to be the last time he ever talks to Lance then he should tell him—  
  
“What else do you miss?” Lance asks. “I miss sitting by the ocean to watch the sunrise.”  
  
“I miss—” _Nothing from earth_ , he wants to say. _The castle ship. The lions. The other paladins. The space mice. You_. “Constellations that I recognize.”  
  
“Oh, I miss that too. I tried to get Allura and Coran to teach me constellations but we move around so much that it’s kind of a lost cause.” He sighs. “Let’s see, what else? I miss how it smells during a thunderstorm.”  
  
“Rain in the desert.”  
  
“Petting a fluffy dog. Or a grumpy cat.”  
  
“Red Bull.”  
  
They go back and forth, occasionally stopping to agree or disagree (“I know I’ve roasted you for this before but _pineapple pizza_?” Lance says, nose wrinkled. “Come on, Keith”) or tell a story about why they miss something in particular (“Carmen loves those horrible microwave mac and cheese cups and I _hate_ them,” Lance says, “but I’d take those over food goo any day” ; “Why,” Keith asks in response, “are all your complaints food related?” ; “ _Because_ , Keith,” Lance says, sticking out his tongue, “unlike _some_ people, I actually have good taste in food, so I miss it when I’m forced to eat food goo that’s blander than white people food.”).  
  
Eventually Lance stops.  
  
“It’s late,” he says.  
  
Keith glances guiltily at the time. He’d almost forgotten about Naxzela; it feels like this is just another call at the end of just another day. He remembers the Black Lion’s hangar again, remembers what happened afterward, and he opens his mouth and—  
  
—and then he remembers Matt, remembers the man with the romantic fruit, remembers the girl with the lipstick autograph, remembers _I’ll get over it_ , and Keith snaps his mouth shut.  
  
It had been months ago. It had been months ago, and it would be stupid to bring it up again, wouldn’t it?  
  
Wouldn’t it?  
  
“Good night,” Lance says, “and good luck for tomorrow.”  
  
“Same to you,” Keith replies, then, rushed, “Lance—”  
  
The screen goes dark.

.^.  
  
(It’s strange, but within a few hours he finds that he can’t really remember many of the details of what happened at Naxzela, just how he felt while it went on. He remembers the tentative satisfaction at first, when everything was going as planned, remembers the terror that seized him when he heard that the planet was a bomb and that Voltron was trapped, remembers that terror morphing into determination and a cold sort of intensity that made him forget everything but saving the planet, the rebels, his friends, his _family_ , remembers that determination melting into regret as he closed his eyes right before impact, because Lance still didn’t know—)  
  
(—he remembers the dull relief of opening his eyes and telling Shiro it wasn’t him, remembers having to suppress the mad urge to keep talking, to tell Lance right then what he regretted not saying when he had thought he would soon cease to exist—)  
  
(—he remembers determination returning to him, this time fiery instead of cold—)  
  
(—he will tell him, he will stop being scared and stupid and cowardly and he will _tell him_ , and he will get to hold Lance’s big hands and kiss Lance’s smiling mouth and look into Lance’s dark eyes and he will feel more alive than he has ever felt—)  
  
(—he will tell him, he will hold Lance’s heart in his hands and keep it close, will tear down the walls around his heart and give it to him in return and trust him to look after it, and the next time he faces death it will be with the knowledge that he has something to live for.)

.^.

After some hasty discussion it is decided that everyone will wait before speaking to Lotor. The battle left many exhausted and injured, a state not ideal for dealing with someone who, until recently, was firmly an enemy, so it is agreed that negotiations will not begin until the next day to allow everyone time to rest and receive medical attention. A handful of rebel fighters and Blade members take turns guarding the room Lotor stays in to ensure he doesn’t try anything in the interim.  
  
Those in need of sustenance or accommodation are invited to come to the castle ship. Keith boards it along with a few other members of the Blade. He’s looking around and wondering if he can sneak away when Kolivan tells him that he is free to do what he likes until negotiations begin.  
  
“You may wish to see your friends,” he says.  
  
Keith blinks at him. Kolivan’s expression is as carefully blank as it had been when he had told Keith about Lance constantly calling him.  
  
“Thank you, sir,” he says, and he thinks he sees the ghost of a smile on Kolivan’s face.

.^.

Keith doesn’t know where to go.  
  
He wants to go to his old room to see if he can find his jacket, the control deck to sit in his old chair, the kitchen to see if the space mice are trying to steal food goo while everyone’s distracted. He wants to go to the dining room, the lounge, the room where Pidge does most of her research. He wants to go to the training deck, the Red Lion’s hangar, the room where he and Lance had watched the stars.  
  
In the end he can’t make up his mind, so he just wanders around. He sees a couple of Blade members he knows, a couple of rebel fighters, but they don’t give him much more than a nod of acknowledgement. It feels strange to be back here after so long, though he doesn’t know if that strangeness is normal. It occurs to him that this is the first time he’s ever come home to a place. He has left a hundred times, has been left a hundred times, but he has never left and come back.   
  
He doesn’t really know what to make of that. He’d thought that missing a place meant feeling happy when you came back, but apparently sadness is part of the return too: sadness that he’d missed out on so much, sadness that he’d been gone in the first place.  
  
A half hour’s wandering finds him in a tiny hallway near where he’d found Hunk’s sock once. It ends in a dead end, so he stops for a minute before turning back. Latent exhaustion is settling within him, making his legs ache and his head pound, and he’s contemplating whether or not he has the energy to go find a comfortable place to lie down or if he should nap right here on the floor of the hallway when he hears rapid footsteps behind him.  
  
Keith turns, and his breath catches, because he hasn’t seen him in person in ages and it shouldn’t be that different from seeing him on a screen but it is, it’s so much better like this, so much better even though his mouth is twisted and there’s cuts on his face.  
  
“Lance,” he begins breathlessly, but Lance cuts him off.  
  
“Matt told us what you did,” Lance says, almost angrily, “you fucking _idiot_ ,” and then he pulls Keith towards him and throws his arms around him.  
  
It’s an awkward hug. Lance is still in his armor and Keith is so caught off guard that he can’t do much more than stand stiffly for several long seconds. But then Lance shifts, mumbles something too low for Keith to hear, tucks his chin over Keith’s shoulder, and Keith finally snaps out of his daze. His arms wind their way around Lance’s waist and he presses as close as he can, and he swears he can feel the stress and adrenaline and horribleness of the past few hours—no, the past few months—seep out of him, absorbed by Lance’s hug and turned into something soft and gentle that nudges comfortingly at his tired heart.  
  
He is overcome with a mad urge to put his face in Lance’s neck (long, and brown, and his hair is long enough now that it’s curling along it), and before he knows what he’s about he does it, turns his face into Lance’s neck and squashes his nose along the curve of it.  
  
And Lance—lets go of him. Lance pulls away and Keith starts to panic, because shit that was the wrong thing to do and he hasn’t been back for even an hour yet and he’s already fucked up and—  
  
Lance unbuckles the top part of his armor, sets it on the floor, then reaches for Keith again.  
  
“I realized bodysuits allow for better hugs than armor,” he explains, “and god knows you need a good hug.”  
  
Relief washes over Keith, followed by renewed nerves when Lance’s arms wrap around him again. He’s never hugged him like this before, where they can truly press together, and Keith is afraid Lance can hear his heart beating in triple time at the contact.   
  
Lance is so—warm. Warm and comforting, and this time his face presses against Keith’s neck, and Keith takes that as an invitation to squash his nose back into Lance’s neck, and he smells like sweat and it should be kind of gross but it isn’t, and Keith thinks that being in Lance’s arms is more healing than anything Galra medication or Altean pods could achieve and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot—  
  
Wait.  
  
“Hey,” Keith says, lifting his head and frowning, “did you call me a fucking idiot?”  
  
Lance’s arms tighten around him and Keith almost misses his response.  
  
“Yes,” he says firmly, and talking is a mistake, talking is a huge mistake, because Lance’s face is still in Keith’s neck and Keith can feel his lips moving against his skin as he speaks and it sends a little shiver through him, “because you are. What kind of stunt was that? You would have died.”  
  
“It would have been worth it,” Keith points out. “Someone had to break the barrier or Voltron would have been destroyed.”  
  
“You—” Lance pulls back to look at him, incredulity written all over his face. “You’re such an idiot—”  
  
Keith’s temper flares. “Stop calling me that!”  
  
“I will call you an idiot every hour for the next month,” Lance snaps. He lets go of Keith and takes a step back. “You were going to _kill yourself_!”  
  
“For a good reason!” Keith shouts. “I don’t get why you’re mad at me for doing what we’re supposed to do! The mission—”  
  
“I know,” Lance says, rolling his eyes. “The fucking mission is bigger than the individual and all that bullshit—”  
  
“It is not bullshit, it’s just practical!”  
  
“Ha!” Lance barks a laugh, loud and mocking. “Practical! Right, I forgot it’s _impractical_ to worry about dying—”  
  
It seems incredible to Keith that only seconds ago they were hugging, because now all he can feel is fury, because Lance is being so fucking obnoxious, why doesn’t he get it, why can’t he understand—  
  
“Look, it would have saved Voltron—”  
  
“We were gonna be fine!”  
  
“No you weren’t, you were gonna die and even if you’d escaped it would have destroyed everything else so I had to do something—”  
  
“Okay but you could have waited for another plan, Keith, you didn’t have to try to fucking _die_ —”  
  
“—and I’m not as important as the rest of you anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered as much—”  
  
“—I swear to god you are the dumbest motherfu—what?”  
  
Lance breaks off abruptly, says the last word low and quiet and stunned. The change in his tone is disarming, and Keith feels his anger fading, replaced with defensiveness.  
  
He crosses his arms. “What do you mean, what?”  
  
“Do you really think that?”  
  
“Think what?”  
  
“That you’re not—” Lance falters, stares at him in a way that makes Keith feel raw and exposed. “Do you think you don’t matter as much as we do?”  
  
“You’re all paladins,” Keith says. “I’m just a member of the Blade. There’s always someone else to replace us.”  
  
A flurry of emotions pass over Lance’s face, so quickly that Keith can’t distinguish any of them.  
  
“I.” Lance makes as if he’s going to move towards him, but he wavers. “I don’t even—” He looks away, puts a hand to his forehead, drops it, then looks back at Keith with a ferocity that startles him. He almost wants to look away, but he holds Lance’s gaze, feeling frozen in place.  
  
“Listen to me,” Lance says, and Keith hadn’t known it was possible for someone to sound furious and heartbroken at the same time, to look like they want to hit and hug someone at the same time. “You are not replaceable. You’re not—you’re not just some stupid brainwashed Marmorite soldier who thinks everything has to be pitted against death.”  
  
“We’re not brainwashed,” Keith starts to say, frowning, but Lance interrupts him.  
  
“Shut up, I’m not done. It doesn’t matter that you’re not a paladin anymore. You’re not replaceable and you’re still important to us. To—to me.” For an instant Lance looks frightened, as if he hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud, but then his face goes back to that peculiar mix of furious and heartbroken. “And I don’t know how to make you understand but if you’d died it would have been—it would have been like when Shiro went missing, but worse, because we would have known for sure you weren’t coming back, and—and fuck, Keith, I don’t even want to think about it, but—” His words speed up, spilling out of his mouth so fast Keith can barely tell them apart. “But it would have been awful, okay, it would have been like—like having a cut that won’t stop bleeding or a broken bone that won’t heal or a giant hole in your chest or—or I don’t even fucking know but it would have _hurt_ and it wouldn’t ever stop hurting because I—because we—love you and I can’t believe you would have made us go through that because you think you aren’t worth as much as us. Because you are. You’re worth everything.”  
  
He stops, sounding like he’s run out of breath. His ears are red and his eyes are dark and determined and still staring straight into Keith’s own and because _I—because we—love you_ is ringing in Keith’s head and Keith—  
  
—Keith’s eyes start to sting.  
  
_No_ , he thinks, a little desperately. _No, please, not here_ —  
  
He blinks rapidly, breaks eye contact in hopes Lance won’t notice—but he notices, of course he notices, because he’s kind and good and _Lance_ , and he steps forward and pulls Keith into his arms again.  
  
This time Keith winds his arms around Lance right away. “Three hugs,” he chokes out past the lump in his throat.  
  
“I told you the McClains are all fantastic at hugging,” Lance says, tucking his face back into Keith’s neck. “We are masters in both quality and quantity offered.”  
  
Keith huffs out a shaky laugh. His eyes continue to burn, so much so that it’s truly painful to keep himself from crying. For a few seconds he fights successfully against the tears, but Lance is soft, and close, and he _loves_ him, and—   
  
—and despite his best efforts a few tears sneak out of Keith’s eyes and drop onto Lance’s neck.  
  
He knows Lance can feel it, and part of him wants to run away and never look at him again, but he’s so tired of running.  
  
So he clutches Lance closer instead, so tightly he’s worried it might be restrictive, but Lance doesn’t complain. He’s warm and comforting and Keith feels himself start to unravel.  
  
“I,” he says, then takes a deep, shuddering breath and goes on brokenly, “I hate it there. I hate it.” He squeezes his eyes shut, though hot tears still slip out. “It’s cold and—and heavy—and lonely—and no one really talks—besides mission-related stuff and—and everything is so serious—and—” He breaks off. The tears are coming faster now, making it harder to speak; he’s shaking a little and he’s mortified and relieved in equal part, but Lance still doesn’t move away, still stays here with him and keeps his arms around him and his face in his neck. “And I miss the castle ship, and the lions—and Pidge and Hunk and Shiro—and Allura and Coran and—and even the dumb space mice and—” He gasps, trying to control his breathing. Lance’s grip on him tightens. “And I miss—you—I miss you so much, Lance—so much I feel like I can’t bear it sometimes—”  
  
Lance starts to pull away and Keith’s breath hitches because no, _no_ , that was too much, _shit_ , he shouldn’t have said that and now Lance is going to let go of him and Keith is still kind of crying and he’s embarrassed and exhausted and he just wants to hold on to Lance for a while longer—  
  
But Lance doesn’t let go. He doesn’t even pull away much, just enough to look at Keith. They’re still close, so close their foreheads might touch.  
  
“I’m here now,” Lance says softly, and with a jolt Keith sees that his eyes are glittering, as if he might start crying too. “We all are. Even the dumb space mice. Who have _names_ , you know,” he adds chidingly, and Keith gives a watery chuckle. “But we’re all here now and you don’t have to leave us again. We’ll find something for you to do, I swear. Just. Stay here. With us.”  
  
He wants to. God, he wants to, but—  
  
“Kolivan will think I’m—”  
  
“Keith,” Lance interrupts, giving him as stern a look as he can with unshed tears in his eyes, “if Kolivan doesn’t let you leave or tries to insinuate you’re flaking on them, I will fly out to the space taco and throw hands with him and the entire fucking Blade myself.”  
  
Keith sniffs and hiccups another laugh. Lance smiles, the slow gentle one that makes Keith feel settled and warm.  
  
“Stay,” Lance says again, “please,” and it’s soft and simple and Keith is so _tired_ and he looks at him, at this bright, beautiful boy who came to find him and comfort him, and he melts.  
  
“Okay,” he says finally, quietly. “I will.”  
  
Lance’s smile grows to dazzling-sun levels. Keith stares at him, dazed, until he feels a hand on his face.  
  
He blinks. “What—”  
  
Lance is wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Don’t want you to scare Pidge,” he murmurs. “If she sees that you’ve been crying she’ll freak out.”  
  
Keith holds very still. Lance’s touch is tender and no one’s ever done this before and he—  
  
—he remembers his conviction after Naxzela.  
  
“Lance.”  
  
He’s still wiping at Keith’s face, even though it isn’t doing much to soak up the tears. “Mm?”  
  
Without really meaning to Keith reaches up and wraps his fingers around Lance’s wrist. Lance freezes.  
  
“I have to tell you something,” Keith says, and his heart is hammering and Lance’s eyes are dark and soft and staring right into his and he doesn’t know who does it but one of them slides his hand so their fingers are laced together and—  
  
And then Keith hears footsteps, small and quick and familiar, and in a blind panic to do this before they are interrupted he darts forward and presses his lips to Lance’s.   
  
It’s the barest brush, so slight Keith is afraid Lance might think it was a mistake, but the wide-eyed look on Lance’s face as Keith pulls away tells him otherwise.  
  
“What—what was—”  
  
The footsteps are rounding the corner.  
  
“Later,” Keith promises, his stomach flipping nervously at how stunned Lance looks. “Not—not in front of everyone.”  
  
Lance regains enough of his wits to nod. They let go of each other right as Pidge’s voice comes bursting through the hallway.  
  
“KEITH!”  
  
Keith hastily wipes away the remnants of his tears with his sleeve and turns to face Pidge as she barrels towards him.  
  
“YOU JERK!” she shouts, punching his arm once she gets to him. “I’M NEVER GONNA SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN!”   
  
She punches his arm a second time, then clings to him, hiding her face in the front of his suit and sniffling distressingly. Keith isn’t sure what to do; he puts an arm around her shoulders, gives her a couple awkward pats on the top of her head, and says, “It’s okay, Pidge, we’re all okay now.” Judging from the expression Lance gives him (a bit fond, a bit relieved, a bit amused), it’s a good enough response.  
  
Hunk isn’t far behind Pidge; he hovers for a minute or two, then gets tired of waiting and sweeps both of them into a bear hug, alternating between threatening to kill Keith for making Pidge cry and telling him he’s so glad he’s okay. Then Shiro’s there, and Allura, and Coran, snaking their way into the hug with a chorus of relieved scolding and aggressive affection. They stay like that for several minutes, him in the center of a group hug that feels a hundred times nicer when it marks a homecoming instead of a leave-taking, and somewhere in the mess of voices he hears Pidge mumbling something about how she’d just gotten her brother back and how she couldn’t possibly stand to lose another one, and he feels Lance’s hand slip into his and squeeze, and for the first time in a while, Keith thinks feeling okay might actually be in reach.

.^.  
  
Eventually, reluctantly, the group hug disbands.  
  
“You should rest,” Allura says. “We all should, actually. Coran has arranged food in the kitchen; you can go get some whenever you’re hungry. I’ll call for you all when we’re ready to speak to Lotor tomorrow.”  
  
They all nod, but no one moves, as if they’re afraid to separate. For a long second there is silence, and then Keith’s stomach growls noisily.  
  
“Um,” he says, pressing a hand to his stomach. “Sorry.”  
  
“Come on,” Hunk says, taking his arm gently. “Let’s get some food. I gotta fix whatever Coran’s made, anyway.”  
  
“I’ll come too,” Pidge says, tucking herself against Keith’s other side.  
  
Allura, Coran, and Shiro all pass in favor of sleeping first. Keith looks expectantly at Lance, but to his disappointment he backs away, his expression unreadable.  
  
“I’m gonna go shower,” he says. “I’ll see you all later.”  
  
He disappears around the corner. Hunk and Pidge herd Keith towards the kitchen. Pidge and Keith sit at the table while Hunk fiddles with the food Coran put out.  
  
“We’re really glad you’re okay,” Pidge says. Her eyes are still pink from crying earlier. “I was so scared when Matt told us what you were gonna do.”  
  
“I know,” Keith says guiltily. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You mean a lot to us, dude,” Hunk says from the counter. “You’re part of our family.”  
  
“I know,” Keith says again. “I talked to Lance about it and I—I’m gonna leave the Blade of Marmora.”  
  
“Good,” says Pidge. “I’ve been really worried about you since you joined them but I wasn’t sure if you’d listen to me if I said anything.” Her expression grows mischievous. “I should have just gotten Lance to talk to you.”  
  
Keith flushes.  
  
“Leave him alone,” Hunk chides, coming over to the table with three bowls. “Here, spicy food goo for you and me, and the macaroni one for Pidge.”  
  
“Thanks,” Keith says, digging in with a relish he never thought would apply to food goo.  
  
Their conversation as they eat is light; a portion of Pidge’s food goo is shaped like Kermit the frog, which prompts her to reference every frog meme she knows, which causes Hunk to fill in Keith on all the memes she and Matt have introduced in the past few weeks, which makes Pidge constantly interrupt him to correct him on the exact delivery or context of said memes. It’s pointless and silly and utterly dumb and Keith loves it.  
  
He watches Hunk and Pidge argue over whether it’s _o shit waddup_ or _oh shit what up_ , watches Pidge stand on her chair in an effort to gain authority, watches Hunk make the mistake of calling her efforts adorable, and he knows the warmth filling him up has nothing to do with the food.  
  
Afterward they each go to their rooms. Everything in Keith’s room is as he left it, though with a vague sense of dust and disuse. He showers, emerges feeling cleaner than he’s ever felt, and with a thorough feeling of satisfaction he marches past his discarded Blade of Marmora suit and plucks his familiar, albeit slightly musty, set of clothes out of his closet. He slides on the jacket last, smoothens down the front and smiles a little. It feels good to be back in it, feels like he belongs in the castle ship now that he has it back on.  
  
He had promised Hunk and Pidge that he would get some rest, and he feels like he could sleep for the next century and it wouldn’t be enough, but there’s one more thing he has to do first.

.^.  
  
Lance isn’t in his room.  
  
Keith knocks and knocks and knocks and knocks, even tries calling through the door a couple of times, but there’s no answer. He puts his ear to it and strains to listen for any indication that Lance is inside, but all he gets is silence and a raised eyebrow from a rebel fighter passing through the hallway. Keith stammers some half formed excuse but the rebel fighter doesn’t stop to hear it.  
  
Keith leans against the wall, frowning. He’s worried that if he checks every common space he’ll waste too much time, or maybe keep missing Lance if he’s looking for him too, so he closes his eyes, thinks—  
  
A soft purr echoes in his mind. He doesn’t know if it’s real or imagined, but he does know that it’s right.  
  
He pushes off the wall and walks to the Red Lion’s hangar.

.^.

Lance is sitting on Red’s left paw.  
  
“Hi,” he says, as Keith enters the hangar.   
  
“Hi,” Keith says back.  
  
He doesn’t move, hovering by the entrance. Lance is in his jeans and hoodie, which is strange given the late hour. The sight of him sends Keith’s heart tumbling in his chest. There’s a part of him that still can’t believe he is seeing him in person after so long.  
  
“Why are you standing so far away?” Lance asks. He scoots over and pats the metal next to him. “Come sit.”  
  
Keith approaches and sits beside him on the lion’s paw. For another few seconds they are silent.  
  
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Lance asks at length.  
  
“Shouldn’t _you_ be asleep?” Keith counters. “I’m surprised you’re not in your pajamas.”  
  
“We had a hard battle,” Lance says, patting the metal again. “I wanted to check on my favorite boy.”  
  
Keith snorts. “Don’t let Blue hear you say that.”  
  
“Blue is my favorite girl,” Lance clarifies, giving him a look. “Red is my favorite boy. Don’t misgender the lions, Keith, that’s rude.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, and Lance grins, and for an instant everything feels normal, feels like the past few months hadn’t happened at all.  
  
But then they are quiet again, and Lance’s grin fades, and Keith’s heart is back to doing gymnastics. He doesn’t know how to bring up what happened earlier. He wishes he had rehearsed what to say, or maybe asked someone for help—no, actually that would have been humiliating—though maybe Hunk or Shiro wouldn’t have made fun of him too much—  
  
“You were gonna tell me something earlier,” Lance says suddenly, “before everyone else found us.”  
  
—or maybe he could just count on Lance for this, as he counts on him for everything.  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, his mouth dry. “Um, actually, two things.” He stares down at his lap, too nervous to meet Lance’s gaze. “I’m not—I’m not good at this kind of stuff so it might be hard for me to say. Or it might come out wrong.”  
  
“That’s okay,” Lance says.  
  
“Okay. So, first—” Keith wavers, then decides to go for the easier statement. “Thank you.”  
  
Lance sounds taken aback. “What for?”  
  
“For—everything,” Keith says haltingly. “For helping me. When Shiro went missing, and when I didn’t know if I could be Black Paladin, and when I didn’t know how to lead or keep the team together, and when you called me while I was with the Blade of Marmora.”  
  
He peeks at Lance, whose brow is knit.  
  
“I mean, you’re welcome, I guess,” Lance says, when it becomes clear Keith isn’t going to say anything else. “But really we all helped. It wasn’t just me.”  
  
“Yes it was,” Keith says immediately, lifting his head to look at Lance properly. “Everyone else did help a little, but you helped me the most. You—you—” He struggles, clenches his fists in his lap, wishes again that he had planned what to say ahead of time. Lance’s brow is still knit. “You calmed me down, and reminded me to stick with the team, and you kept me from losing my temper—well, from losing it as often—”  
  
Lance snickers.  
  
“—and you told me about all the stuff happening here while I was away.”  
  
“So did everyone else,” Lance points out.  
  
“Yes, but—” Frustration bubbles up in him. “It’s different from you. You—you make me happy.”  
  
Lance blinks.  
  
“Keith” is all he says.  
  
“I’d talk to the others and I’d be happy during the conversation and then it’d be over and I’d be back to feeling—feeling empty. But I’d be happy talking to you and then I’d—I’d stay happy. Even after it was over. If I was tired or down or on a long mission or something I’d think about talking to you and it’d make me feel better. It was like—” He falters, wanting to look away for this next part, but he forces himself to keep Lance’s gaze. “It was like I carried around the happiness of talking to you.”  
  
“Keith,” Lance says again, and the way he says it, the way he looks at him as he says it, makes Keith’s heart stutter.  
  
“You make me happy,” he says again, more firmly than before, then, his words picking up speed, “which brings me to the other thing I have to tell you and I’m not really sure I should even say it cause it was a really long time ago and you might be over it but I want you to know that I lied back then, I—”  
  
“ _Keith_ ,” Lance says a third time, and kisses him.  
  
Keith’s brain fizzles out; he’s vaguely aware of pushing forward, of his hands unclenching and coming up to clutch at Lance’s shoulders, but then—  
  
“Wait.” Lance pulls away, just enough to speak. “Just to be clear—you were talking about when I told you I like you, right? And that you like me back.”  
  
Keith isn’t sure how his voice will work after what just happened, but he manages to croak, “Yeah.”  
  
“Cool,” Lance replies, relieved, and then he’s kissing him again, and this time his hands cup Keith’s face, tilt it a little to change the angle, and then Lance moves his mouth against his and _oh_ okay, this makes it better, this makes it much much much better, makes it a real kiss, deep and gentle and shooting little crackles of electricity through Keith. He slides a hand up from Lance’s shoulder until it’s in his hair instead, and finally, finally he can do what he’s thought about for so long, can tangle his fingers in the curls over his neck, can run his fingers through them over and over.  
  
Lance hums a little into his mouth when he does that, and he _really_ likes that sound, and he’s wondering if he can make him do it again when Lance pulls away with a soft _pop_ and leans his forehead on Keith’s. Keith opens his eyes, though he hadn’t remembered closing them, and the look on Lance’s face is so fully, fiercely delighted that he feels almost shy.  
  
“I can’t believe you _like_ me,” Lance says breathlessly, huffing a laugh. “I feel like I’m dreaming.” He pauses. “Wait. _Am_ I dreaming? Or maybe I died at Naxzela and this is some kinda post-mortem vision.”  
  
“Don’t joke about that,” Keith says, frowning, then, hesitantly, “and that’s not—right.”  
  
“What isn’t right?”  
  
“What you just said,” he says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t like you,” Keith says, then, seeing how Lance’s eyes bug out, clarifies hastily, “No, I do like you, I meant I—” He feels his face heat, knows it must be as bright red as the lion they are sitting on. “I—love you.”  
  
He mumbles it but they are still leaning on each other’s foreheads so Lance catches it anyway.  
  
“You love me?” he repeats, and his eyes are shining and his voice is shining and Keith feels oddly shy again for someone who had just been kissing not moments ago. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, his face still on fire. “Please don’t make me say it again.”  
  
Lance laughs, the sound warming Keith inside and out.  
  
“I love you too,” he says, and the words warm Keith even more than the laugh, and then Lance kisses him again and he thinks that maybe he could get over the embarrassment of saying he loves Lance if it means he will kiss him like this, hot and soft and maddeningly slow, his arms wrapped tight about Keith and his tongue dragging along Keith’s lower lip, coaxing it open and setting the rest of him on fire too.  
  
A hazy minute passes, and then on a whim he bites down on Lance’s lower lip, and he makes this _noise_ that shoots through Keith like lightning, and then Lance’s mouth leaves his and his hands are at his jaw, tilting it up, and he’s trailing kisses down Keith’s neck, hot and wet and open mouthed and—and fuck, okay—  
  
“Lance,” he rasps, and then after a few seconds, “ _Lance_.”  
  
Lance stops. Keith can feel him grinning against his skin. “You called, babe?”  
  
Keith hadn’t thought it was possible to want to roll your eyes while kissing someone, but he also hadn’t thought it was possible to be here, like this, with Lance. Lance pulls away, his hands moving to rest at Keith’s waist. Keith’s fingers are still in Lance’s hair, so he slides his hands down to his shoulders instead as Lance leans his forehead on his again.  
  
“I know we should sleep,” he says, “cause we have a pretty big problem to deal with tomorrow, but I kind of want to stay here forever.”  
  
Keith understands. He feels like they’re suspended in time, in some space where nothing exists but him and Lance and the Red Lion.  
  
Oh.  
  
“Does Red mind us being here?” Keith asks.  
  
Lance listens for a moment. “Nah, he says he’s glad we idiots have figured things out after so long.”  
  
Keith gives him a dead stare. “I doubt he called us idiots.”  
  
“No, just you.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
Lance kisses the tip of his nose. “Aw, I’ve missed indignant Keith. It’s my favorite Keith next to grumpy cat Keith—ah, like that,” he says, grinning as Keith scowls.  
  
“I am not grumpy,” he says grumpily, then, more softly, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”  
  
“You don’t have to apologize,” Lance says, his voice also softening.  
  
“I do,” Keith insists. He lifts his forehead off of Lance’s to look at him better. “I liked you back then, when you told me you like me, but I said I didn’t cause I was scared I would mess things up, and I ended up messing things up anyway and I hurt you—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Lance interrupts, soothing. “It’s not your fault you were scared. And yeah, it hurt, it hurt a lot, but it’s over now, right? We’re okay now.”  
  
“I’m still sorry,” Keith says, determined to be miserable, because Lance should be mad, he _should_ , Keith made him suffer for no reason—  
  
“And I still don’t think you need to be sorry,” Lance counters.  
  
“Well I am,” Keith says, glaring.

“Well you don’t need to be.”  
  
“But I _am_!”  
  
“But you _shouldn’t_ be!” Lance half shouts, glaring back.  
  
For a long moment they both stare each other down, their arms still around each other, and then the Red Lion rumbles, some sort of a cross between a laugh and an exasperated sigh.  
  
Both boys look up at the lion, then at each other, then burst out laughing.  
  
“This is dumb,” Lance says, when he can speak again.  
  
“Yeah,” Keith agrees, still smiling. “Thanks, Red.”  
  
“He says no problem, and that he’s always willing to remind two idiots of what matters,” Lance reports.   
  
“Idiots again? Red has gotten a lot ruder lately.” Keith smirks. “Probably your influence.”  
  
“How dare you,” Lance says, outraged. “I’ll have you know that I am a perfect gentleman when it comes to—”  
  
To what, Keith never finds out, because he decides that outraged Lance is a Lance deserving of another kiss, and he leans forward to do just that.  
  
“We,” breathes Lance against his lips, after what feels like minutes, or hours, or maybe several days, “should really go get some sleep.”  
  
Keith reluctantly pulls away with a nod. They let go of each other and hop off the Red Lion’s paw.  
  
“Thanks for playing matchmaker, handsome,” Lance says, winking up at the lion, then reaches for Keith’s hand. “This okay?”  
  
Keith nods and Lance laces his fingers with his. They slowly start to walk towards the exit of the hangar.  
  
“Do you want to come to my room?” Lance asks. “We can sleep together.” His ears turn red at an alarming rate. “I mean—not _sleep together_ , but like, _together_! Sleep next to each other! Just sleeping! Side by side!”  
  
Keith suppresses a laugh. “Yeah, I’d like that.”  
  
Lance’s ears return to normal. “Cool.”  
  
The rest of the walk is in comfortable silence. When they reach his room Lance stops and turns, his back to the door. He takes Keith’s other hand in his.  
  
“I’m glad you told me,” he says.  
  
Keith looks at him, at his dark eyes and his constellation freckles and his bright smile, at his big hands and brown curls and broad shoulders, at this boy who has crashed into his life and his heart and made a home there.  
  
“Me too,” he says simply. “We don’t know what’ll happen after tomorrow, but I’m glad that we—that we have each other. I think I could take on Zarkon again if you’re with me.”  
  
Embarrassment floods through him as soon as he says it, but Lance’s expression makes it worth it.  
  
“Keith,” he says, adorably flustered. “Babe. You can’t just _say_ that.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because—” Lance splutters, letting go of one of Keith’s hands to wave the door open. “Never mind, I shouldn’t tell you. You’ll have too much power. Though,” he says, as they enter his room, “you should definitely not take on Zarkon again. That was terrifying and dumb and no amount of love will keep me from murdering you if you try to do that again.”  
  
“Fine,” Keith says, as the door closes behind them. “Can I take on Lotor?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Lance says emphatically. He turns to face him once more, taking Keith’s hand back in his. “I want to do that.”  
  
Keith frowns. “How come you can fight Lotor alone but I can’t fight Zarkon?”  
  
“How about this,” Lance says. “We’ll both fight Lotor. I don’t trust him anyway, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to work with him. The second we go to negotiate tomorrow morning we should just punch him.”  
  
“Punch him?” Keith repeats, amused.  
  
“Yeah. No bayards, just a direct hit to the face.”  
  
He’s absurd, and an absurd Lance is also a Lance deserving of a kiss, so Keith tilts his head up and presses his lips to his. He draws away before Lance can deepen it.  
  
“Whatever happens,” he says, reveling in how awestruck Lance looks at such a short kiss, “I’m glad we’re dealing with it together.”  
  
“Aw, yeah,” Lance says, grinning. “We’re gonna kick their asses, babe.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes and Lance protests his eye roll and then he’s pulling Keith towards the bathroom so they can brush their teeth together like “a real couple, Keith, we can be like old married folks—do you even have a toothbrush, I think there’s a spare around here somewhere— _no_ , Keith, you are not skipping brushing your teeth, that’s _gross_ ” and for now everything still feels soft and slow and suspended in time, and Keith knows that they can’t stay here forever, knows that they’ll have to leave this suspended state in the morning, knows that there’s still so much, still his place on the team to figure out and Lotor and his generals to deal with and a whole empire to defeat.  
  
But he has his family with him, has Lance with him, and he knows so long as they stick together they’ll be all right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! to make up for all the angst I’m writing a little epilogue and hopefully it’ll be up in the next week or so (posted separately but I’ll make a series so you can just click to it from this fic) so if you’re into dumb soft domestic crap then keep an eye out for that
> 
> also sorry for any typos I’m so tired of looking at this document lmao if there’s anything big enough to be confusing please let me know and I’ll fix it
> 
> voltron tumblr is [laallomri](https://laallomri.tumblr.com) if you wanna like/reblog the link to this you can do so [here](https://laallomri.tumblr.com/post/168734005668/under-your-feet-the-dirt-turns-to-gold-chapter-1) and I’d really appreciate it! feel free to come bother me about the show, this fic, how your day’s going, whatever. sometimes I do incorrect quotes too that no one thinks are funny except me (rip)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! I've already started part 2 so hopefully I'll post it within the next month. I'll also be posting separately a much shorter piece as an epilogue
> 
> voltron tumblr is [laallomri](https://laallomri.tumblr.com), feel free to come bother me about this, the show, how your day's going, whatever


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